Ulysses

v' ^ o

Co

SRINAGAR

LIBRARY

rr»

c/ass A/o.

BooA /Vo.

Accession No

TO THE READER.

1^ I N D I- y ijsc this book verv
CtUcfiilK'. It tlic book ♦.lisfi'jurcd
or nuukod or written on while in your
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U L S S K S

SRINAGAR t
I' 1 B R A R Y

Class No.

Book No._

Accession No.

|.\.\[ F.S

JO^'C

Mil liODI I V |l|,,\l)

I C)\l)o\

First Unlimited Edition 1937
Repirintcd 1941
Reprinted 1 947
Reprinted 1949
Reprinted i 952

\ 4 - 4-^0

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S>-i}tagar^

Made and printed in Great Britain by

THE PITMAN PRESS, BATH
for JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD

28 Little Russell St., London W.C.i

PREVIOUS EDITIONS OF ULYSSES’

Shakespeare and Company, Paris h-hki-akv ly:.-

1.000 numbered copies

Egoist Press, London October 1922

2.000 numbered copies, of which 500 copies were
burned bv the New York Post Office Authorities

Egoist Press, London jancary 1923

500 numbered copies, of which 499 copies were
seized by the Customs Authorities, Kolkestone

Shakespeare and Company, Paris janparv 1924

Unlimited edition

The Odyssey Press,

Paris, Hamburg, Bologna ulcember 1932

Unlimited edition

Random House, New York January 1934

Unlimited edition

Limited Editions Club, New York

1,500 copies, illustrated and signed by Henri
Matisse

OCTOBER 1935

John Lane, The Bodlev Head, London October 1936

1,000 numbered copies, of which 100 arc signed
by the author

ULYSSES

SRINAGAR i

library

C/ass No._ __
Book Nq,

Accession No.

I

Stately, plump bock mulligan came fkom the stairhead,
bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
A yellow dressinggown, ungirdlcd, was sustained gently behind him
by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

— Intro 'tbo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up
coarsely;

— Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful Jesuit.

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He
faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surround-
ing country and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of
Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in tlie
air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedr js,
displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and
looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that Messed him, equine in
its length, and at the light untonsured hair, g^ned and hued like
pale oak.

Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror and then
covered the bowl smartly.

— Back to barracks, he said sternly. ^

He added in a preacher’s tone:

— For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and
soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents.
One moment. iC little trouble about those white corpuscles.
Silence, all.

He peered sideways up and gave a long low whistle of call, then
paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here
and there with gold points. Chrysosiomos. Two strong shrill whistles
answered through the calm.

— Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch
off the current, will you?

He skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher,
gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump
shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts
in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.

— The mockery of it, he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient
Greek.

I

B

fie pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet,
laughing to himself. Stephen Dedalus stepped up, followed him
wearily halfw'ay and sat down on the edge ot the gunrest, watching
him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush m
the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.

Buck Mulligan’s gay voice went on.

My name is absurd too: Malachi Mulligan, two dactyls. But it

has a Hellenic ring, hasn’t it? Tripping and sunny like the buck him-
self. VVe must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to
fork out twenty quid?

He laid the brush aside and, laughing w’ith delight, cried:

— Will he come? The jejune Jesuit.

Ceasing, he began to shave with care.

— Tell me. Mulligan, Stephen said quietly.

— Yes, my love?

— How long is Haines going to stay in this tower?

Buck Mulligan showed a shaven check over his right shoulder.

—God, isn’t he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He
thinks you’re not a gentleman. God, these bloody English. Bursting
with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford.
You know, Dedalus, you have the real Oxford manner. He can t
make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-
blade.

He shaved warily over his chin.

— He was raving all night about a black panther, Stephen said.
Where is his guncase? ..

— A woful lunatic. Mulligan said. Were you in a funk?

— I was, Stephen said with energy and growing fear. Out here in
thedark with a man I don’t know raving and moaning to himself about
shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I’m not a
hero, however. If he stays on here I am off.

Buck Mulligan frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He
hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets
hastily.

— Scutter, he cried thickly.

He came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Stephen’s
upper pocket, said;

— Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.

Stephen suQ^ered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner

a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Buck Mulligan w iped the razorblade
neatly. Then, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:

— The bard’s noserag. A new art colour for our Irish poets: snot-
green. You can almost taste it, can’t you.^

He mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay,
his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.

— God, he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what .Algv calls it: a grev
sweet mother.^ The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi
oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks. I must teach you. You must
read them in the original. Thalattal Thalatta] She is our great sweet
mother. Come and look.

Stephen stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he
looked down on the W'atcr and on the mailboat clearing the harbour
mouth of Kingstown.

— Our mighty mother, Buck Mulligan said.

He turned abruptly his great searching eyes from the sea to
Stephen’s face.

— The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. Thai’s why she
won’t let me have anything to do w’ith you.

— Someone killed her, Stephen said gloomily.

— You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying
mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I’m hyperborean as much as
you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath
to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is some-
thing sinister in you. . .

He broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A
tolerant smile curled his lips.

— But a lovely mummer, he murmured to himself. Kinch, the
loveliest mummer of them all.

He shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.

Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm
against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-
sleeve. Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart.
Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted
body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax
and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful,
a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw
the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him.
The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl

3

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of \sliite china had stood beside her deathbed holding flic green
sluggish Hlc which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of
loud groaning vomiting.

Buck ^tulligan wiped again his razorblade.

— xA.h, poor dogsbody, he said in a kind voice. I must give you a
shirt and a few noserags. How arc the secondhand breeks.^

— The' fit well enough, Stephen answered.

Buck Alulligan attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.

— 1 he mockery of it, he said contentedly, secondleg they should
be. God knows what poxy bovvsy left them off. I have a lovely pair
with a liair stripe, grey. You’ll look spiffing in them. Tm not joking,
Kinch. You look damn well when you’re dressed.

— Thanks, Stephen said. I can’t wear them if they are grey.

— He can’t wear them. Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can’t wear grey
trousers.

He folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt
the smooth skin.

Stephen turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its
smokcblue mobile eyes.

— That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Buck Mulligan,
says you have g. p. i. He’s up in Dottyville with Conolly Norman.
General paralysis of the insane..

He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings
abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven Ups
laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized
all his strong wellknit trunk.

— Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard.

Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him,
cleft by a crooked crack, hair on end. As he and others see me. Who
chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me
too.

— I pinched it out of the skivvy’s room. Buck Mulligan said. It
docs her all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for
Malachi. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.

Laughing again, he brought the mirror away from Stephen’s
peering eyes.

— The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If
Wilde were only alive to sec you.

4

Drawing back and pointing, Stephen said with bitterness:

— It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked lookingglass of a servant.

Buck Mulligan suddenly linked his arm in Stephen’s and walked
with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket
where he had thrust them.

It’s not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly.

God knows you have more spirit than any of them.

Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that ot his.
The cold steclpcn.

—Cracked lookingglass of a servant. 'Icll that to the oxy chap
downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He’s stinking with money and
thinks you’re not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling
jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, it you
and I could only work together we might do something for the island.
Hellenize it.

Cranly’s arm. His arm.

— And to think of your having to beg Irorn these sw'inc. I m the
only one that knows what you are. Why don’t you trust me more?
What have you up your nose against me? Is it Haines? If he makes
any noise here I’ll bring down Seymour and we’ll give him a ragging
worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.

Young shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe’s rooms.
Palefaces: they hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another, O,
I shall expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! 1 shall die!
With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles
round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of
Magdalen with the tailor’s shears. A scared calfs face gilded with
marmalade. I don’t want to be debagged! Don’t you play the giddy
ox with me!

Shouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle.
A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold’s face,
pushes his mower on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing
motes of grasshalms.

To ourselves . . . new paganism . . . omphalos.

— Let him stay, Stephen said. There’s nothing wrong with him
except at night.

— Then what is it? Buck Mulligan asked impatiently. Cough it
up. I’m quite frank with you. What have you against me now?

They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay

5

on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Stephen freed his
arm quietly.

— Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.

—Yes, what is it? Buck Mulligan answered. I don’t remember
anything.

He looked in Stephen’s face as he spoke. A light wind passed his
brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points

of anxiety in his eyes.

Stephen, depressed by his own voice, said:

Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my

mother’s death?

Buck Mulligan frowned quickly and said:

What? Where? I can’t remember anything. I remember only

ideas and sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?

— You were making tea, Stephen said, and I went across the landing
to get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the
draw'ingroom. She asked you who was in your room.

— Yes? Buck Mulligan said. What did I say? I forget.

You said, Stephen answered, O, it's only DeJalus "whose mother is

beastly dead.

A flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to
Buck Mulligan’s cheek.

— Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?

He shook his constraint from him nervously.

— And what is death, he asked, your mother’s or yours or my own?
You saw’ only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the
Mater and Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissecting room.
It’s a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn’t matter. You
wouldn’t kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when
she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed Jesuit strain in you,
only it’s injected the wrpng way. To me it’s all a mockery and beastly.
Her cerebral lobes arc not functioning. She calls the doctor Sir Peter
Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it’s over.
You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because
I don’t whingc like some hired mute from Lalouette’s. Absurd I I
suppose I did say it. I didn’t mean to offend the memory of your
mother.

He had spoken himself into boldness. Stephen, shielding the gaping
wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:

6

— I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.

— Of what, then? Buck Mulligan asked.

— Of the offence to me, Stephen answered.

Buck Mulligan swung round on his heel.

— O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.

He walked off quickly round the parapet. Stephen stood at his post,
gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now
grew dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he
felt the fever of his cheeks.

A voice within the tower called loudly:

— Are you up there. Mulligan.^

— I’m coming, Buck Mulligan answered.

He turned towards Stephen and said:

— Look at the sea. What docs it care about offences? Chuck Loyola,
Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers.

His head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level
with the roof.

— Don’t mope over it all day, he said. I’m inconsequent. Give up
the moody brooding.

His head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out
of the stairhead:

And no more turn aside and brood
Upon love's bitter mystery
For Fergus rules the brazen cars.

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from
the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the
mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White
breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand pluck-
ing the harpstrings merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded
words shimmering on the dim tide.

A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, shadowing the bay in deeper
green. It lay behind him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus’ song: I
sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her
door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity
I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those
words, Stephen: love’s bitter mystery.

Where now?

Her secrets: old feather fans, tassellcd dancecards, powdered with

7

Library Sri Pratap ColUg

miisk, a gaud of amber beads in her Hckcd drawer. A birdcage liung
in the sunnv uindow of her house when she was a girl. Slie heard
old Royce sing in the pantomime of 1 urko the terrible and laughed
with otliers when he sang:

I am the hoy
That can enjoy
Invisibility.

Phantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.

And no more turn aside and brood

Folded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories
beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when
she had approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown
sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her
shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the
children’s shirts.

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within
its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her
breath bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted
ashes.

Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul.
On nK alone. The ghostcandlc to light her agony. Ghostly light on
the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all
prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. Liliata^
rutilantium te conjessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum
chorus excipiat.

Ghoull Chewer of corpses I

No, mother. Let me be and let me live.

— Kmch ahoy I

Buck Mulligan’s voice sang from within the tower. It came hearer
up the staircase, calling again. Stephen, still trembling at his soul’s
cry, heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly
words.

— Dedalus, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready.
Haines is apologizing for waking us last night. It’s all right.

— I’m coming, Stephen said, turning.

8

—Do, for Jesus’ sake, Buck Mulligan said. For my sake and for
all our sakes.

His head disappeared and reappeared.

—I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it’s very clever.
Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.

— I get paid this morning, Stephen said.

—The school kip? Buck .Mulligan said. How much? Four quid?
Lend us one.

— If you want it, Stephen said.

—Four shining sovereigns, Buck Mulligan cried with delight.
We’ll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four
omnipotent sovereigns.

He flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out
of tune with a Cockney accent:

O, uont ur have a merry time
Drinking uhiskyy beer and icine.

On coronation.

Coronation day ?

O, vx>nt we have a merry time
On coronation day ?

Warm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shaving-bowl
shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or
leave it there all day, forgotten friendship?

He went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness,
smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in w hich the brush was stuck.
So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now
and yet the same, A servant too. A server of a servant.

In the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Buck Mulligan’s
gowned form moved briskly about the hearth to and fro, hiding and
revealing its yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the
flagged floor from the high barbicans; and at the meeting of their rays
a cloud of coalsmokc and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.

We’ll be choked, Buck Mulligan said. Haines, open that door,

will you?

Stephen laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from
the hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and
pulled open the inner doors.

— Have you the key? a voice asked,

9

— Dedalus has it. Buck Mulligan said. Janey Mack, I’m choked.

He howled without looking up from the fire:

— Kinch!

— It’s in the lock, Stephen said, coming forward.

'Hie key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had
been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Haines stood at
the doorway, looking out. Stephen haled his upended valise to the
table and sat down to wait. Buck Mulligan tossed the fry on to the
dish beside him. 7'hen he carried the dish and a large teapot over to
the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.

— I’m melting, he said, as the candle remarked when. . . But hush.
Not a word more on that subject. Kinch', wake up. Bread, butter,
honey. Haines, come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and
these thy gifts. Where’s the sugar? O, jay, there’s no milk.

Stephen fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttcrcooler
front the locker. Buck Mulligan sat down in a sudden pet.

— What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.

— We can drink it black, Stephen said. There’s a lemon in the
locker.

— O, damn you and your Paris fads, Buck Mulligan said. I want
Sandycove milk.

Haines came in from the doorway and said quietly:

— That w'oman is coming up with the milk.

— The blessings of God on you. Buck Mulligan cried, jumping up
from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in
the bag. Here, I can’t go fumbling at the damned eggs. He hacked
through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, saying:

— In nomine Patris et Fiiii et Spiritus Sancti.

Haines sat down to pour out the tea.

— I’m giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Mulligan,
you do make strong tea, don’t you?

Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old
woman’s wheedling voice:

— When I makes tea 1 makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And
when I makes water I makes water.

— By Jove, it is lea, Haines said.

Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:

— So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Btgob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill,
God send you don't make them in the one pot,

lo

He lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread,
imp4}ed on his knife.

— That’s folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Haines. Five
lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of
Dundrum, Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.

He turned to Stephen and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his
brows;

— Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan’s tea and water pot
spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?

— I doubt it, said Stephen gravely.

Do you now? Buck Mulligan said in the same tone. Your reasons,

pray?

—I fancy, Stephen said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the
Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of
Mary Ann.

Buck Mulligan’s face smiled with delight.

— Charming, he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth
and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she w'as? Quite
charming.

Then, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a
hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:

— For old Mary Ann
She doesn t care a damn^

But, hising up her petticoats. . .

He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.

The doorway was darkened by an entering form.

— The milk, sir.

— Come in, ma’am. Mulligan said. Kinch, get the jug.

An old woman came forward and stood by Stephen’s elbow.

— That’s a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.

— To whom? Mulligan said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure.

Stephen reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.

— The islanders, MulUgaasaid to Haines casually, speak frequently
of the collector of prepuces.

— How much, sir? asked the old woman.

— A quart, Stephen said.

He watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich

white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a
measureful .and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning
world, maybe a messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk,
pouring it out. Crouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush
field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the
squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky
cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old
times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her
conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a
messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether
he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.

— It is indeed, ma’am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their
cups.

— Taste it, sir, she said.

He drank at her bidding.

— If we could only live on good food like that, he said to her some-
what loudly, we wouldn’t have the country full of rotten teeth and
rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets
paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives’ spits.

— Arc you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.

— I am, ma’am. Buck Mulligan answered.

Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a
voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman; me
she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there
is of her but her woman’s unclean' loins, of man’s flesh made not in
God’s likeness, the serpent’s prey. And to the loud voice that now
bids her be silent w'ith wondering unsteady eyes.

— Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.

— Is it French you arc talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.

Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.

•—Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on vou?

— I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound oV it. Are vou from
west, sir?

— I am an Englishman, Haines answered.

He s English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to
speak Irish in Ireland.

— Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I’m ashamed I don’t
speak the language myself. I’m told it’s a grand language by them
that knows.

12

— Grand is no name for it, said Buck Mulligan. Wonderful entirely.
Fill us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma’am?

— No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the
milkean on her forearm and about to go.

Haines said to her:

— Have you your bill? We had better pay her. Mulligan,
hadn’t we?

Stephen filled the three cups.

— Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it’s seven mornings a pint at
twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three
mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling and one and
two is two and two, sir.

Buck Mulligan sighed and having filled his mouth with a crust
thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to
search his trouser pockets.

— Pay up and look pleasant, Haines said to him smiling.

Stephen filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the
thick rich milk. Buck Mulligan brought up a florin, twisted it round
in his fingers and cried:

— A miracle!

He passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:

— Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give.

Stephen laid the coin in her uncager hand.

— We’ll owe twopence, he said.

— ^Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough.
Good morning, sir.

She curtseyed and went out, followed by Buck Mulligan’s tender
chant:

— Heart oj my hearty were it more.

More would be laid at your jeet.

He turned to Stephen and said:

— Seriously, Dedalus. I’m stony. Hurry out to your school kip
and bring us back some money. Today the bards must drink and
junket. Irelands expects that every man this day will do his duty.

— That reminds me, Haines said, rising, that I have to visit your
national library today.

— Our swim first, Buck Mulligan said.

He turned to Stephen and asked blandly:

»3

— Is this ihc day for your monthly wash, Kinch?

Then he said to Haines?

— The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.

— All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Stephen said as he let
honey trickle over a slice of the loaf.

Haines from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about
the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:

— I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.

Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit.
Conscience. Yet here’s a spot.

— That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the
symbol of Irish art is deuced good.

Buck Mulligan kicked Stephen’s foot under the table and said with
warmth of tone:

— Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Haines.

— Well, I mean it, Haines said, still speaking to Stephen. I was just
thinking of it when that poor old creature came in.

— Would I make money by it? Stephen asked.

Haines laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast
of the hammock, said:

— 1 don’t know, I’m sure.

He strolled out to the doorway. Buck Mulligan bent across to
Stephen and said with coarse vigour:

— You put your hoof in it now'. What did you say that for?

— Well? Stephen said. The problem is to get money. From whom?
From the milkwoman or from him. It’s a toss up, I think.

— I blow him out about you. Buck Mulligan said, and then you
come along w’iih your lousy leer and ybur gloomy Jesuit jibes.

— 1 sec little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.

Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen’s arm.

— From me, Kinch, he said.

In a suddenly changed tone he added:

— To tell you the God’s truth I think you’re right. Damn all else
they are good for. Why don’t you play them as I do? To hell with
them all. Let us get out of the lup.

He stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown,
saying resignedly:

— Mulligan is stripped of his garments.

He emptied his pockets on to the table.

*4

— There’s your snotrag, he said.

And putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie, he spoke to them,
chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and
rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief.
Agenbilc of inwit. God, w'c’ll simply have to dress the character. I
want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict
myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Malachi. A
limp black missile flevs’ out of his talking hands.

— And there’s your Latin quarter hat, he said.

Stephen picked it up and put it on. Haines called to them from the
doorway:

— Arc you coming, you fellows?

— I’m ready, Buck Mulligan answered, going towards the door.
Come out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he
passed out with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:

— And going forth he met Buttcrly.

Stephen, taking his ashplant from its Icaningplace, followed them
out and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door
and locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.

At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:

— Did you bring the key?

— I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.

He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with, his
heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.

— Down, sir. How dare you, sir?

Haines asked.

— Do you pay rent for this tower?

— Twelve quid, Buck Mulligan said.

— To the secretary of state for war, Stephen added over his shoulder.

They halted while Haines surveyed the tower and said at last:

— Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?

— Billy Pitt had them built, Buck Mulligan said, W'hen the French
were on the sea. But ours is the omphalos.

— What is your idea of Hamlet? Haines asked Stephen.

— No, no. Buck Mulligan shouted -in pain. I’m not equal to
Thomas Aquinas and the fiftyfive reasons he has made to prop it
up. Wait till I have a few pints in me first.

He turned to Stephen, saying as he pulled down neatly the peaks
of his primrose waistcoat:

*5

— You couldn’t manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?

— It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.

— You pique my curiosity, Haines said amiably. Is it some paradox?

— Pooh! Buck Mulligan said. We have grown out of Wilde and
paradoxes. It’s quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet’s
grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost
of his own father.

— \\'hat? Haines said, beginning to point at Stephen. He himself?

Buck Mulligan slung his towel stolew’isc round his neck and, bending
in loose laughter, said to Stephen’s car:

— O, shade of Kinch the elder! japhet in search of a father!

— \\'e’re always tired in the morning, Stephen said to Haines. And
it is rather long to tell.

Buck Mulligan, walking forward again, raised his hands.

— The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus, he said.

— I mean to say, Haines explained to Stephen as they followed, this
tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. That
beetles o'er his base into the sea, isn’t it?

Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but
did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own
image in cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires.

— It’s a wonderful talc, Haines said, bringing them to halt again.

Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent.
The seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the
smokeplumc of the mailboat, vague on the bright skyline, and a sail
tacking by the Muglins.

— I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said
bemused. The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned
with the Father.

Buck Mulligan at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He
looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from
which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinidng with
mad gaiety. He moved a doll’s head to and fro, the brims of his
Panama hat quivering, and began to chant in a quiet happy foolish
voice:

— I'm the queerest young jellonjo that ever you heard.

My mother's a Jew, myjather's a bird.

With "Joseph the Joiner I cannot agree.

So here's to disciples and Calvary.

i6

He held up a forefinger of warning.

— If anyone thinks that I amn't dixine

He'll get no free drinks ■when I'm making the wine
But have to drink water and ■wish it were plain
That I make when the wine becomes water again.

He tugged swiftly at Stephen's ashplant in farewell and, running
forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins
or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:

— Goodbye, now, goodbye. H'rite down all 1 said

And tell Tom, Dick and Harry I rose from the dead.
fVhat's bred in the bone cannot jail me to fly
And Olivet's breexy. . . Goodbye, now, goodbye.

He capered before them down towards the fortyfoot hole, fluttering
his wingUke hands, leaping nimbly. Mercury’s hat quivering in the
fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdlike cries.

Haines, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside

Stephen and said:

We oughtn’t to laugh, I suppose. He’s rather blasphemous. I’m

not a believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out
of it somehow, doesn’t it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?

—The ballad of Joking Jesus, Stephen answered.

— O, Haines said, you have heard it before?

— Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.

You’re not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer

in the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles
and a personal God.

—There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.

Haines stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a
green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.

—Thank you, Stephen said, taking a cigarette.

Haines helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in
his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox,
sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk

towards Stephen in the shell of his hands.

—Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe

17 c

Library Sri Pratap College

or you don’t, isn’t it? Personally I couldn’t stomach that idea of a
personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose?

— You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible
example of free thought.

He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his
side. Its ferrule follov^ed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels.
Aly familiar, after me, calling Sieeeececeeephcn. A wavering line along
the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He
wants that key. It is mine, I paid the rent. Now I cat his salt bread.
Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it’. That was in his eyes.

— After all, Haines began. . .

Stephen turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him
was not all unkind.

— After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are
your own master, it seems to me.

— I am the servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an
Italian.

— Italian? Haines said.

A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me. .

— And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.

— Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?

— The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising,
and the holy Ron\an catholic and apostolic church.

Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he
spoke.

— I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must
think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated
you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame.

The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s memory the triumph
of their brazen bells: t/ unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam eccUsiam:i
the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rar^
thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for
pope NIarcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation:
and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant dis-
armed and menaced her hcresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with
mitres awry; Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was
one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the
Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ’s terrene body,
and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father

i8

was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment
since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void awaits
surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a
worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael s host,
who defend her ever in the hour of conflict witli their lances and their
shields.

Hear, hear. Prolonged applause. Zutl NomdeDieul

— Of course I’m a Britisher, Haines’ voice said, and I feci as one. 1
don’t want to sec my country f ill into the hands of German jews either.
That’s our national problem, I’m afraid, just now.

Two men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businesstnan,

boatman.

— She’s making for Bullock harbour.

The boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.

—There’s five fathoms out there, he said. It’ll be swept up that way
when the tide comes in about one. It’s nine days today.

The man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay
waiting for a swollen bundle to bog up, roll over to the sun a puffy
face, salt white. Here I am.

They followed the winding path down to the creek. Buck Mulligan
stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his undipped tic rippling over his
shoulder. A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him moved
slowly frogwisc his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.

— Is the brother with you, Malachi?

— Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.

Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet

young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.

— Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.

Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot
up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the
stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair,
water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black
sagging loincloth.

Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing
at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at
brow and lips and breastbone.

— Seymour’s back in town, the young man said, grasping again his
spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.

— Ah, go to God, Buck Mulligan said.

*9

— Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl,
Lily?

— Yes.

— Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rolto
with money.

— Is she up the pole?

— Better ask Seymour that.

— Seymour a bleeding officer, Buck Mulligan said.

He nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying
tritely:

— Redheaded women buck like goats.

He broke off' in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.

— My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. Tm the XJebermensch. Toothless
Kinch and I, the supermen.

He struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his
clothes lay.

— Are you going in here, Malachi?

— Yes. Make room in the bed.

The young man shoved himself backward through the water and
reached the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Haines sat
down on a stone, smoking.

— Are you not coming in? Buck Mulligan asked.

— Later on, Haines said. Not on my breakfast.

Stephen turned away.

— Tm going, Mulligan, he said.

— Give us that key, Kinch, Buck Mulligan said, to keep my chemise
flat.

Stephen handed him the key. Buck Mulligan laid it across his
heaped clothes.

— And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.

Stephen threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing.
Buck Mulligan erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:

— He who stcaleth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake
Zarathustra.

His plump body plunged.

— We’ll see you again, Haines said, turning as Stephen walked up
the path and smiling at wild Irish.

Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.

— The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve.

20

— Good, Stephen said.

He walked along the upwardcurving path.

Uliata rutilantium.

Turma circumdet.
lubilantium te virginum.

The priest’s grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I
will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.

A voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea.
Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek
brown head, a seal’s, far out on the water, round.

Usurper.

★ — You, COCHRANE, WHAT CITY SENT FOR HIM?

— Tarentum, sir.

— Very good. Well?

— There was a battle, sir.

— Very good. Where?

The boy’s blank face asked the blank window.

Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if
not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of
Blake’s wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass
and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What’s left us
then?

— I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.

— Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the
gorescarred book.

— Yes, sir. And he said; Another victory like that and we are done Jor.

That phrase the world had remembered. A dull case of the mind.
From a hill abovoa corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers,
leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.

— You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?

— End of Pyrrhus, sir?

— I know, ^ir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.

— Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

21

A bag of bgrolls lay snugly in Armstrong’s satchel. He curled them
between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs
adhered to the tissues of his lips. A sweetened boy’s breath. WcllofF
people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico Road,
Dalkey.

— Pyrrhus, sir.^ Pyrrhus, a pier.

.All laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked
round at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will
laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their
papas pay.

— Tell me now, Stephen said, poking the boy’s shoulder with the
book, what is a pier.

— A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the waves. A kind
of bridge. Kingstown pier, sir.

Some laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back
bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been
innocent. All. With envy he watched their faces. Edith, Ethel,
Gerty, Lily. Their likes: their breaths, too, sweetened with tea and
jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle.

— Kingstown pier, Stephen said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.

The words troubled their gaze.

— How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.

For Haines’s chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid
wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What
then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed,
winning a clement master’s praise. Why had they chosen all that part?
Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale
like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar
not been knifed to death? They are not to be thought away. Time has
branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite
possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing
that they never were.^ Or was that only possible which came to pass?
Weave, weaver of the wind.

— Tell us a story, sir.

— Oh, do, sir, A ghoststory.

— Where do you begin in this? Stephen asked, opening another
book.

— IVeep no morcy Comyn said.

22

— Go on then, Talbot.

— And the history, sir?

— After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.

A swarthy ^y opened a book and propped it nimbly under the
breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances
at the text:

— Weep no more, wojul shepherd, weep no more
For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead.

Sunk though he be beneath the watery fioor. . .

It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible.
Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated
out into the studious silence of the library of Sainte Genevieve where
he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his
elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and
feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly
beating feelers: and in my mind’s darkness a sloth of the underworld,
reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought
is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a
manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden,
vast, candescent: form of forms.

Talbot repeated:

— Through the dear might oj Him that walked the waves.

Through the dear might. . .

— Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don’t see anything.

— What, sir? Talbot asked simply, bending forward.

His hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again
having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also
over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoflFcr’s heart and
Ups and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin
of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s. A
long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven
on the church’s looms. Ay.

Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.

My father gave me seeds to sow,

23

Talbot slid hU closed book into his satchel.

— Have I heard all? Stephen asked.

— Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.

— Half day, sir. Thursday.

-.-Who can answer a riddle? Stephen asked.

They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling.
Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all
gabbling gaily:

— A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.

— O, ask me, sir.

— A hard one, sir.

— This is the riddle, Stephen said:

The cock crew
The sky was blue:

The belts in heaven
Were striking eleven.

Tis timejor this poor soul
To go to heaven.

— What is that?

— What, sir?

— Again, sir. We didn’t hear.

Their eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence
Cochrane said;

— What is it, sir? We give it up.

Stephen, his throat itching, answered:

— The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their
cries echoed dismay.

A stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:

— Hockey!

They broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them.
Quickly they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of
sticks and clamour of their boots and tongues.

Sargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an
open copybook. His tangled hair and scraggy neck gave witness of
unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up plead-
ing. On his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, date-
shaped, recent and damp as a snail’s bed.

24

He held out his copybook. The word Sums was written on the head-
line. Beneath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature
with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.

— Mr Deasy told me to write them out all again, he said, and show
them to you, sir.

Stephen touched the edges of the book. Futility.

— Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.

— Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. .Mr Deasy said I
was to copy them off the board, sir.

— Can you do them yourself? Stephen asked,

— No, sir.

Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a
snail’s bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and
in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled
him under foot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his w'cak
watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only
true thing in life? His mother’s prostrate body the fiery Columbanus
in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a
twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She
had saved him from being trampled under foot and had gone, scarcely
having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath
winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright
eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened,
scraped and scraped.

Silting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by
algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather. Sargent
peered askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled
in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the
field.

Across the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the
mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes.
Give hands, traverse, bow to partner; so: imps of fancy of the Moors.
Gone too from the world, Averrocs and Moses Maimonides, dark men
in mien and movement, Hashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure
soul'of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness
could not comprehend.

— Do you understand now? Can you w'ork the second for yourself?

— ^Yes, sir.

In long shady strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for

25

.1 word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint
hue of shame Bickering behind his dull sldn. Amor mairis: subjective
.ind objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she
had fed liim and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.

Like him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracclcssness. My
cliildhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there onc;e
or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, storiy
sit in the d.irk palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny:
tyrants willing to be dethroned.

The sum was done.

— It is very simple, Stephen said as he stood up.

— Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.

He dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his
copybc’ok back to his desk.

— You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Stephen
said as he followed towards the door the boy’s graceless form.

— Yes, sir.

In the corridor his name was heard, called from the playficld.

— Sargent!

— Run on, Stephen said. Mr Deasy is calling you.

He stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the
scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in
teams and Mr Deasy came stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered
feet. \N'hen he had reached the schoolhousc voices again contending
called to him. He turned his angry while moustache.

— What is it now? he cried continually without listening.

— Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Stephen cried.

— Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Deasy said, till I
restore order here.

And as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man’s voice
cried sternly:

— What is the matter? What is it now?

1 heir sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms
closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his
illdycd head.

Stale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded
leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here.
.As it was in the beginning, is now'. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart
coins, base treasure of a .bog: and ever shall be. And snvlg in their

26

spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having j\'cached
to all the gentiles: world without end.

A hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out
his rare moustache Mr Deasv halted at the table.

— First, our little financial settlement, he said.

He brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong.
It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves,
and laid them carefully on the table.

— Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.

And now’ his'strongroom for the gold. Stephen’s embarrassed hand
moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and
money, cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir’s
turban, and this, the scallop of Saint James. An old pilgrim’s hoard,
dead treasure, hollow shells.

A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.

— Three, Mr Deasy said, turning his little savingsbox about in his
hand. These are handy things to have. Sec. This is for sovereigns.
This is for shillings, sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.

He shot from it two crowns and two shillings.

— Three twelve, he said. I think you’ll find that’s right.

— Thank you, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with
shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.

— No thanks at all, Mr Deasy said. You have earned it.

Stephen’s hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols
too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket. Symbols soiled
by greed and misery.

— Don’t carry it like that, Mr Deasy said. You’ll pull it out some-
where and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You’ll find
them very handy.

Answer something.

— Mine would be often empty, Stephen said.

The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three
times now. Three nooses round me here. Well. I can break them in
this instant if I will.

— Because you don’t save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You
don’t know yet what money is. Money is power, when you have
lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what
docs Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy pune.

— lago, Stephen murmured. ^ ^

27 Library Sn Pratap Collie,

Srinagar^

Me lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man’s stare.

— He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A
poet but at) Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the
English? Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear
from an Englishman’s mouth?

The seas’ ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: history
is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.

— That on his etnpire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.

— Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That’s not English. A French Celt said
that. He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.

— I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid
my way.

Good man, good man.

— paid my nay. 1 never borrenved a shilling in my lije. Can you
tee] that? I owe nothing. Can you?

Mulligan, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, tics.
Curran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings.
I'emple, two lunches. Russell, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob
Reynolds, half a guinea, Kohler, three guineas, Mrs McKcrnan, five
w eeks’ board. The lump I have is useless.

— For the moment, no, Stephen answered.

Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.

— I knew you couldn’t, he said joyously. But one day you must
Iccl it. We are a generous people but we must also be just.

— I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.

Mr Deasy stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece
at the shapely bulk of a man in tartan fillibegs; Albert Edward, Prince
of Wales.

— You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice
said. I saw three generations since O’ConneU’s time. I remember the
famine. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of
the union twenty years before O’Connell did or before the prelates
of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You feniaos
forget some things.

Glorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in
Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse,
masked and armed, the planters’ covenant. The black north and true
bluebible. Croppies lie down.

Stephen sketched a brief gesture.

28

— I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Dcasy said. On the spindle side.
But I am descended from sir John Blackwood who voted for the
union. We are all Irish, all kings* sons.

— Alas, Stephen said.

— Per vias rectas, .Mr Dcasy said firmly, was his motto. He voted
for it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the .Ards ot
Down to do so.

Lai the ral the ra
The rocky road to Lublin.

A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir John.
Soft day, your honour. . . Day. . . Day. . . Two topboots jog
dangling on to Dublin. Lai the ral the ra, lal the ral the raddy.

— That reminds me, Mr Dcasy said. You can do me a favour, Mr
Dedalus, with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for
the press. Sit down a moment. I have just to copy the end.

He went to the desk near the window', pulled in his chair tw’icc and
read off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.

— Sit dow’n. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, the dictates oj
common sense. Just a moment.

He peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his
elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard
slowly, some times blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an
error.

Stephen seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence.
Framed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage,
their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings’ Repulse, the duke of
Westminster’s Shotover, the duke of Beaufort’s Ceylon, /r/x de Paris,
1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds,
backing king’s colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crow'ds.

— Full stop, Mr Deasy bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this
important question. . .

Where Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among
the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of booldcs on their pitches
and reck of the canteen, over the motley slush. Even money Fair
Rebel: ten to one the field. Dicers and thimblcriggers we hurried by
after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced
woman, a butcher’s dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.

29

Shouts rang shrill from the boys’ playficld and a whirring whistle.

Again: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in
a medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother’s darling
who seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds,
shock by shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen death-
spew of the slain, a shout of spear spikes baited with men’s bloodied
guts.

— Now then, Mr Deasy said, rising.

He came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Stephen stood up.

— I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said. It’s about
the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no
two opinions on the matter.

May I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of laissez jaire
w hich so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old
industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour
scheme. European conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow
w’atcrs of the channel. The pluterperfcct imperturbability of the
department of agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra.
By a woman who was no better than she should be. To come to the
point at issue.

— I don’t mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.

Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch’s preparation. Serum
and virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor’s horses
at Miirzstcg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Black-
wood Price. Courteous offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense.
Allimportant question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the
horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your .columns.

— 1 want that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. You will see
at the next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it
can be cured. It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me
it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there.
They offer to come over here. I am trying to work up influence with
the department. Now I’m going to try publicity. I am surrounded by
difficulties, by . . . intrigues, by . . . backstairs influence, by . . .

He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

— Mark my words, Mr Dedalus, he said. England is in the hands
of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And
they arc the signs of a nation’s decay. Wherever they gather they cat
up the nation’s vital strength. I have seen it coming these years. As

30

sure as we are standing here the jew merchants arc already at their work
of destruction. Old England is dying.

He stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed
a broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.

— Dying, he said, if not dead by now.

The harlot's cryjrom street to street
Shall weave old England's winding sheet.

His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in
which he halted.

— A merchant, Stephen said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear,
jew or gentile, is he not.^

— They sinned against the light, Mr Dcasy said gravely. And you
can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they arc wanderers
on the earth to this day.

On the steps of the Paris Stock Exchange the goldskinned men
quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabbles of geese. They
swarm^ loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting
under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these
gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and
unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew
their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely
would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and
passing on. Their eyes knew the years of wandering and, patient,
knew the dishonours of their flesh.

— Who has not.^ Stephen said.

— What do you mean? Mr Dcasy asked.

He came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell
sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear
from me.

— History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to
awake.

From the playfleld the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle:
goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?

— ^Thc ways of the Creator arc not our ways, Mr Dcasy said. All
history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.

Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

— That is God.

3 *

Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhce!

— What? Mr Deasy asked.

— A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Mr Deasy looked down and held for a while the wings of his nose
tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.

— I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many
errors and many sins. A w'oman brought sin into the world. For a
woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway
w ife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless
wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough’s
wife and her Icman O’Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too
brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one
sin. I am a strugglcr now at the end of my days. But I will fight for
the right till the end.

For Ulster will fight
And Ulster will be right.

Stephen raised the sheets in his hand.

— Well, sir, he began.

— I foresee, Mr Deasy said, that you will not remain here very long
at this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I
am wrong.

— A learner rather, Stephen said.

And here what will you learn more?

Mr Deasy shook his head.

— Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is
the great teacher.

Stephen rustled the sheets again.

— As regards these, he began.

— Yes, Mr Deasy said. You have two copies there. If you can
have them published at once.

Telegraph. Irish Homestead.

—I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know
two editors slightly.

—That v/ill do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr
Field, M. P. There is a meeting of the cattlctradcrs’ association today
at the City Arms Hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the
meeting. You sec if you can get it into your two papers. What arc
they?

32

—The Evening Telegraph. . .

— That will do, Mr Dcasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I
have to answer that letter from my cousin.

— Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket.
Thank you.

— Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk.
I like to break a lance with you, old as I am.

— Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back.

He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under
the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the
playficld. The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through
the gate; toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan
will dub me a new name; the bullockbefriending bard.

— Mr Dedalus!

Running after me. No more letters, I hope.

— Just one moment.

— Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate.

Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

— I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour
of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you
know that.’ No. And do you know why?

He frowned sternly on the bright air.

— Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.

— Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.

A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a
rattling ^ain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laugh-
ing, his lifted arms waving to the air.

— She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he
stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That’s why.

On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun
flung spangles, dancing coins.

•k Ine ldctab le modality pp THE visible; at least that ip no
more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things 1 am
here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.
Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane.

33 ^

But he adds; in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of
them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure.
Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno.
Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can
put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your
eyes and see.

Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and
shells. You are walking through it howso«ever. I am, a stride at a
time. A very short space of time through very short times of space.
Five, six; the nacheinander. Exactly; and that is the ineluctable
modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a
cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the nebeneinander in-
eluctably. I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs
at my side. Tap w'ith it; they do. My two feet in his boots are at the
end of his legs, nebeneinander. Sounds solid; made by the mallet of
Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount
strand? Crush, crack, crik, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Deasy
kens them a’.

Won't you come to Sandymount ^

Madeline the mare?

Rhythm begins, you see. I hear. A catalectic tetrameter of iambs
marching. No, agallop; Me wtfre.

Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since?
If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Bastal I will sec
if I can see.

Sec now. There all the time without you; and ever shall be, world
without end.

They came dowrt the steps from Leahy’s terrace prudently, Frauen-
zimmer: and down the shelving shore flabbily their splayed feet sinking
in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty
mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife’s bag, the other’s
gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs
Florence MacCabc, relict of the late Patk MacCabc, deeply lamented,
of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squeding into life.
Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a
trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back,
strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will

34

you J^e as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello. Kinch here. Put me
on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha; nought, nought, one.

Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Hcva, naked Eve. She
had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler
of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing
from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin.

Wombcd in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them,
the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on
her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler’s will. From
before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever.
A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein
Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try
conclusions? Warring his life long on the contransmagniheandjew-
bangtantiality. lllstarred heresiarch. In a Greek watercloset he
breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier,
stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed
omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

Airs romped around him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming,
waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the
steeds of Mananaan.

I mustn’t forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship,
half twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young
imbecile. Yes, I must.

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to Aunt Sara’s or not?
My consubstantial father’s voice. Did you see anything of your
artist brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he’s not down in Strasburg
terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn’t he fly a bit higher than that,
eh? And and and and tell us Stephen, how is uncle Si? O weeping
God, the things I married into. De boys up in de hayloft. The
drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly
respectable gondoliers. And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no
less. Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept; and no wonder, by Christ.

1 pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They
take me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.

— It’s Stephen, sir.

— Let him in. Let Stephen in.

A bolt drawn back and Walter welcomes me.

— We thought you were someone else.

In his broad bed nunde Richie, pillowed and blanketed, extends

35

over the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested, He has
w ashed the upper moiety.

— Morrow, nephew.

He lavs aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for
the eyes of Master GofF and Master Shapland Tandy, filing consents
and common searches and a writ oi Duces Tecum. A bogoak frame over
his bald head: Wilde’s Requiescat. The drone of his misleading whistle
brings Walter back.

— Yes, sir?

— Malt for Richie and Stephen, tell mother. Where is she?

— Bathing Crissie, sir.

Papa’s little bcdpal. Lump of love.

— No, uncle Richie. . .

— Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!

— Uncle Richie, really. . .

— Sit down or by the law Harry Til knock you down.

Walter squints vainly for a chair.

— He has nothing to sit down on, sir.

— He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our Chippendale
chair. Would you like a bite of something? None of your damned
lawdeedaw air here; the rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure?
So much the better. We have nothing in the house but backache pills.

All 'ertal

He drones bars of Ferrando’s aria di soriita. The grandest number,
Stephen, in the whole opera. Listen.

His tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the
air, his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.

This wind is sweeter.

Houses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowcs gentry
you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come
out of them, Stephen. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay
of Marsh’s library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim
Abbas. For whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close.
A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane
foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled.
'I'he oval equine faces. Temple, Buck Mulligan, Foxy Campbell.
Lantern jaws. Abbas father, furious dean, what offence laid fire to
their brains? Paff! Descende, ca/ve^ ut ne nimium deea/verh, A garland
of grey hair on his comminated head see him me clambering down to

36

the footpace {Jescende), clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get
down, bald poll! A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about
the altar’s horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their
albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys ot
wheat.

And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating
it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx.
Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his
own cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam
thought of that, invincible doctor. A misty English morning the
imp hypostasis tickled his brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling
he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he is
lifting hU) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is
kneeling) twang in diphthong.

Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were
awfully holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed \^irgin that you
might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine
avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more
from the wet street. O //, certo! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags
pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still! On the top of the
Howth tram alone crying to the rain; naked women! What about
that, eh?

^^^at about what? What else were they invented for?

Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was
young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to
applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot!
Hray! No-one saw-: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with
letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes,
but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies on green
oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great
libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read
them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della
Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange
pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who
once. . .

The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again
a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the
unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada.
Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing

37

upw ard sewage breath. He coasted them, walking warily. A porter-
bottle stood up, stogged to its w-aist, in the cakey sand dough. A
sentinel; isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land
a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscraw'led backdoors
and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts.
Ringscnd: wigw-ams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human
shells.

He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara’s. Am I not going
there? Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed
the firmer sand towards the Pigeonhouse.

— Qui vous a mis dans cette Jichue position?

— C'est le pigeon^ Joseph.

Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar

MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father’s

a bird, he lapped the sweet lait chaud with pink young tongue, plump
bunny’s face. Lap, lapin. He hopes to win in the gros lots. About the
nature of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me La Vie de
Jisus by M. Leo Taxil. Lent it to his friend.

— C'est tordant^ vous savez. Moi je suis socialiste. Je ne crois pas en
I existence de Dieu. Faut pas le dire a mon pire.

— II croit?

— Mon pere, oui.

Schluss, He laps.

My Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. 1
want puce gloves. You were a student, weren’t you? Of what in the
other devil’s name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: physiques,
chimiques et naturelles. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of mou en civet,
fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most
natural tone; when I was in Paris, bouC Mich; I used to. Yes, used to
carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder
somewhere. Justice. On the night of the seventeenth of February
1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it:

other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. Lui, c'est moi. You seem to have
enjoyed yourself.

Proudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget:
a dispossessed. With mother’s money order, eight shillings, the
banging door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher.
Hunger toothache. Encore deux rmnutes. Look clock. Must get.
Fermi. Hired dogl Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun,

38

bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place
clack back. Not hurt? O, that’s all right. Shake hands. See what I
meant, see? O, that’s all right. Shake a shake. O, that’s all only all
right.

You were going to do wonders, what? .Missionary to Europe after
fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their crecpystools in heaven
spilt from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: Euge! Euge! Pretending
to speak broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence,
across the slimy pier at Newhaven. Comment? Rich booty you
brought back; Le Yw/u, ‘five tattered numbers of Pantalon Blanc et
Calotte Rouge^ a blue French telegram, curiosity to show:

— Mother dying come home father.

The aunt thinks you killed your mother. That’s why she won’t.

Then here's a health to Mulligan's aunt
And ril tell you the reason ii>hy.

She always kept things decent in
The Hannigan jamileye.

His feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows,
along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly,
piled stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders.
The sun is there, the slender trees, the lemon houses.

Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist
pith of farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense,
court the air. Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife’s lover’s wife,
the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hands.
In Rodot’s Yvonne and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties,
shattering with gold teeth chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed
with the pus of flan Breton. Faces of Paris men go by, their wcllplcascri
pleasers, curled conquistadores.

Noon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through
fingers smeared with printer’s ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his
white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. XJn
demi setter! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She
serves me at his beck. II est irlandais. Hollandais? Non Jromage.
Deux irlandaisy nous, Irlande^ vous savez? Ah out! She thought you
wanted a cheese hollandais. Your postprandial, do you know that
word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona.

39

queer fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well; ilaintet Around
the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges.
Hie breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green fairy’s' fang
thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes,
conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now. To yoke me as his yokefellow,
our crimes our common cause. You’re your father s son. I know the
voice. His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels
at his secrets. M. Drumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what
he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. Vieille
ogresse with the d’en/j jaunes. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, La
Pafrie, M. Millcvoye, Felix Faure, know how he died? Licentious
men. The froeken, 6onnf a toutjaire, who rubs male nakedness in the
bath at Upsala. Mot Jaire, she said. Tous Ui menieurs. Not this
Monsieur^ I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing.

I wouldn’t let my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious
thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I f^eel. Lascivious people.

The blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose
tobacco shreds catch fire; a dame and acrid smoke light our corner.
Raw facebones under his peep of day boy’s hat. How the head centre
got away, authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil,
orangcblossoms, drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost
leaders, the betrayed, wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not
here.

Spurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I
tell you. I’ll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for
her love he prowled with colonel Richard Burke, tanist of his sept,
under the walls of Clcrkcnwcll and, crouching, saw a flame of
vengeance hurl them upward in the fog. Shattered glass and toppling
masonry. In gay Parec he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any
save by me. Making his day's stations, the dingy printingcasc, his
three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue dc la
Gouttc-d’Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless,
landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast man,
madamc, in rue Git-lc-Coeur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy
cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spumed and un-
despairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won’t you? I wanted to get poor
Pat a job one time. Mon JilSy soldier of France. I taught him to sing.
The boys oj Kilkenny are stout roaring blades. Know that old lay? I
taught Patrice that. Old Kilkenny; saint Canicc, Strongbow's castle

40

on the Norc. Goes like this. 0,0. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by
the hand.

O, O thi boys oj
Kilkenny. . .

Weak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not
he them. Remembering thee, O Sion.

He had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his
boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild
air of seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish
lightship, am I? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly
in the quaking soil. Turnback.

Turning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly
in new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through
the barbicans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet
are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, night-
fall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their
pushcdback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned
platters. Who to clear it.^ He has the key. I will not sleep there when
this night comes. A shut door of a silent tower entombing their blind
bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted
his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders.
Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the
moon’s midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered,
hearing Elsinore’s tempting flood. Cb

The flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get
back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over
the sedge and ecly oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his
ashplant in a grike.

A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladdcrwrack. Before him
the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Vn coche ensabli^ Louis Veuillot
called Gautier’s prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind
have silted here. And there, the stonehcaps of dead builders, a warren
of weasel rats. Hide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and
stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout’s toys. Mind you don’t get one
bang on the ear. I’m the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well
boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefaw'fum. I zmellz dc
bloodz odz an Iridzman.

A point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sw'cep of sand.

4*

Lord, is he gcing to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be
master of others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From
farther away, walking shoreward across from the crested tide, figures,
two. 7'he twc maries. They have tucked it safe among the bulrushes.
Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back to them.
Who?

Galleys of 1 lie Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their
blood beaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings,
tores of tomal. twks agUtter on their breasts when Malachi wore the
collar of gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon,
spouting, hobt ling in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework
city a horde of jerkinetl dwarfs, my people, with flayers’ knives,
running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine,
plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me, th«r lusts my waves. I
moved among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among
the spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me.

The dog’s bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my
enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribilia
meditans. A primrose doublet, fortune’s knave, smiled on my fear.
For that are you pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live
their lives. Tlte Bruce’s brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight,
Perkin Warbeck, York’s false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose
ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and
sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings’ sons. Paradise of pretenders
then and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a
cur’s yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele
w?re in their own house. House of. . . We don’t want any of your
medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A Iwat would
be near, a lifebuoy. Nat'urlichy put there for you. Would you or
would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago oflF
Maiden’s rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out.
I would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water
cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can’t
see! Who’s behind me? Out quickly, quicklyl Do you see the tide
flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sands quickly,
shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still
to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream
to me out of horror of his death. I. . . With him together down. . .
I could not save her. Waters: bitter death: lost.

4 *

A woman and a man. I sec her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.

Their dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing
on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he
made off like a bounding huic, ears Hung back, chasing the shadow of
a lowskimming gull. The man’s shrieked whistle struck his limp ears.
He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks.
On afield tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringc
of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His
snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of scamorsc. They
serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth,
breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves.

Cocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping,
soused their bags, and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped
running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours,
again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he
kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolfs
tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of
them and then loped off at a calf’s gallop. The carcass lay on his path.
He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went
round it, sniffing rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog’s bedraggled
fell. Dogskull, dogsnift, eyes on the ground, moves to one great
goal. Ah, poor dogsbody. Here lies poor dogsbody’s body.

— Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel.

The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt boot-
less kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in Bight.
He slunk back in a curve. Doesn’t see me. Along by the edge of the
mole he lolloped, dawdled, smelt a rock and from under a cocked
hindleg pissed against it. He trotted forward and, lifting his hindleg,
pissed quick short at an unsmclt rock. The simple pleasures of the
poor. His hindpaws then scattered sand: then his forepaws dabbled
and delved. Something he buried there, his grandmother. He rooted
in the sand, dabbling, deh ing and stopped to listen to the air, scraped
up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a
panther, got in spousebrcach, vulturing the dead.

After he woke me up last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open
hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am
almosting it. That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon
he had he held against my face. Smiled: creamfruit smell. That was
the rule, said. In. Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who.

43

Shouldc ring their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued
tect out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick
muffler strangling his unshaven neck. With w oman steps she followed :
the ruffian and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose
sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet. .About her windraw face her
hair trailed. Behind her lord his helpmate, bing awast, to Romeville.
VS'hen night hides her body’s flaws calling under her brown shawl from
an archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two
Royal Dublins in O’Loughlin’s of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in
rogue’s rum lingo, tor, O, my dimber wapping dell. A shefiend’s
whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally’s lane that night: the
tanyard smells.

M'hite thy Jumhies, red thy gan
And thy ^uarrons dainty is.

Couch a hogshead with me then.

In the darkmans clip and kiss.

Morose delectation Atjuinas tunbclly calls this, frate porcospino.
Unfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: thy quarrons
dainty is. Language no whit worse than his. .Monkwords, marybeads
jabber on their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their
pockets.

Passing now.

A side-eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I
sit? I am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun’s
darning sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges,
schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moon-
drawn, in her vs'ake. Tides, myriadislandcd, within her, blood not
mine, oinopa ponton, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon.
In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridcbed, childbed,
bed of death, ghostcandled. Omnis caro ad te veniet. He comes, pale
vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth
to her mouth’s kiss.

Here. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her
kiss. No. Must be two of cm. Glue ’em well. Mouth to her mouth’s
kiss.

His lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her
womb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath.

44

iinspecched: ooecchah: roar of cataractic planets-, globed, blazing,
roaring wayawavawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast
them. Old Deasy’s letter. Here. Thanking you for hospitality tear
the blank end off. Turning his back to the sun he bent over far to a
tabic of rock and scribbled words. That’s twice I forgot to take slips
from the library counter.

His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending, \^'hy not endless
till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness
shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there
v>ith his augur’s rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid
sea, unbehcld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars.
I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it
back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches
me here? Who ever anywhere will read these w-ritten words? Signs
on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your fluticst voice. The
good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat;
veil of space W’ith coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard.
Coloured on a fiat; yes, that’s right. Flat I see, then think distance,
near, far, fiat I sec, cast, back. Ah, sec now. Falls back suddenly,
frozen in stereoscope. Click docs the trick. You find my words dark.
Darkness is in our souls, do you not think? Fluticr. Our souls, shame-
wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover
clinging, the more the more.

She trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the
blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable
modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The
virgin at Hodges Figgis’ window on Monday looking in for one of the
alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her.
Wrist through the braided jess of her sunshade. She lives in Lecson
park, with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to some-
one else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays
suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy w'ool. Talk
about apple dumplings, piuttosto. Where are your wits?

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O,
touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? lam quiet
here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

He lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the
scribbled note and pencil into a pocket, his hat tilted down on his
eyes. That is Kevin Egan’s movement I made nodding for his nap,

45

babbath sleep. Et viuit Deus. Et grant valde bona. Alo! Bonjour,
welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he watched through
peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in this
burning scene. Pan’s hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy
serpcntplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie
w'ide. Pain is far.

And no more turn aside and brood.

His gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck’s castoffs nebenein-
ander. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another’s
foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium,
foot I dislove. But you were delighted wlien Esther Osvalt’s shoe went
on you: girl I knew in Paris. Tiens, quel petit pied! Staunch friend,
a brother soul: Wilde’s love that dare not speak its name. He now w'ill
leave nie. And the blame.^ .As I am. As I am. All or not at all.

In long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering
greengoldcnly lagoons of sand, rising, ^flowing. My ashplant will
float away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing chafing against
the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen:
.1 fourw'ordcd wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseciss, ooos. Vehement
breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of
rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap; bounded in barrels. And, spent, its
speech ceases. It flow’s purling, widely flowing, floating foampool,
flower unfurling.

Under the upsw’clling tide he saw' the writhing weeds lift languidly
and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water
swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night:
lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they arc weary; and, whispered to,
they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting,
awaiting the fullness of their times, diebus ac noettbus inturias pattens
ingemiscit. To no end gathered: vainly then released, forth flowing,
w’cnding back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers,
lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil
of waters.

Five fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one
he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before
it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising
saltw’hitc from the undertow, bobbing landward, a pace a pace u
purpose. There he is. Hook it quick. Sunk though he be beneath
the watery floor. Wc have him. Easy now.

46

Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat
of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserflv.
God becomes nian becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes
featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust,
devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale
he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole
snoring to the sun.

A seachange this, brown eyes saltbluc. Seadeath, mildest of all
deaths known to man. Old Father Ocean. Prix de Paris: beware of
imitations. Just you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves
immensely.

Come. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are
there? Thunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the
intellect, Lueijer, dico^ qui nescit occasum. No. My cockle hat and start
and his my sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will
find itself.

He took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still.
Yes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their
end. By the way next when is it? Tuesday will be the longest dav.
Of all the glad new year, mother, the rum turn tiddlcdy turn. Lawn
Tennyson, gentleman poet. Gia. For the old hag with the yellow
teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman journalist. Gia. My teeth
arc very bad. Why, I wonder? Feel. That one is going too. Shells.
Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That one.
Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or does it
mean something perhaps?

My handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?

His hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn’t. Better buy
one.

He laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock,
carefully. For the rest let look who will.

Behind. Perhaps there is someone.

He turned his face over a shoulder, rcrc regardant. Moving througli
the air high spars of a threemastcr, her sails brailed up on the crosstrccs,
homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.

MMM

47

II

ir Mr LEOPOLD BLOOM ATE WITH RELISH THE INNER ORGANS OF

beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a
>tufFed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s
rocs. iVIost of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his
palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly,
righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air
were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning every-
where. Made him feel a bit peckish.

The coals wxre reddening.

Another slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t
like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle
off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat,
its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat
walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high.

— Mkgnao!

— O, there you are, Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire

The cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of
the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtablc. Pit.
Scratch my head. Prr.

Mr Bloom watched curiously, kindly, the lithe black form. Clean
to sec: the gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of
her tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on
his knees.

— Milk for the pussens, he said.

— Mrkgnao! the cat cried.

They call them stupid. They understand what we say better than
we understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive
too. Wonder what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she
can jump me.

—Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the
chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.

Cruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.

— Mrkrgnaol the cat said loudly.

She blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plain-
tively and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the
dark cyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then

48

he went to the dresser^ took the jug Hanlon’s milkman had just filled for
him, poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor.

— Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.

He watched the bristles shining wirilv in the weak light as she tipped
three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they
can’t mouse after. Why.^ They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips.
Or kind of feelers in the dark, perhaps.

He listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs
with this drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day
cither for a mutton kidney at Buckley’s. Fried with butter, a shake
of pepper. Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz’s. \^^ile the kettle is
boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are
their tongues so rough? To lap belter, all porous holes. Nothing she
can eat? He glanced round him. No.

On quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused
by the bedroom door. She might like sonjething tasty. Thin bread
and butter she likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.

He said softly in the bare hall:

— I am going round the corner. Be back in a minute.

And when he had heard his voice say it he added:

— You don’t want anything for breakfast?

A sleepy soft grunt answered:

— Mn.

No. She did not want anything. He heard then a warm heavy
sigh, softer, as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the
bedstead jingled. Must get those settled really. Pity. All the way
from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew'. Wonder
what her father gave for it. Old style. Ah yes, of course. Bought it
at the governor’s auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a
bargain, old Tweedy, Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the
ranks, sir, and I’m proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make
that comer in stamps. Now that was farseeing.

His hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat,
and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: sticky-
back pictures. Daresay lots of officers arc in the swim too. Course they
do. The sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely:
Plasto’s high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband.
White slip of paper. Quite safe.

On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there.

49 »

In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky ward-
robe. No use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He
pulled the halldoor to after him verv quietly, more, till the footleaf
dropped gently o\'cr the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right
till I come back anvhow.

He crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose ccllarflap of number
seventyfive. The sun u as nearing the steeple of George’s church. Be
a warm day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more.
Black conducts, reflects (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn’t go
in that light suit. .Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often
as he walked in happy warmth. Boland’s breadvan delivering with
trays our daily but she prefers yesterday’s loaves turnovers crisp
crowns hot. Makes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early
morning; set oft at dawn, travel round in front of the sun, steal a day’s
march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically.
Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a city gate, sentry there,
old ranker too, old Tweedy’s big moustaches leaning on a long kind
of a spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by.
Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated cross-
legged smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink
water scented with fennel, sherbet. Wander along all day. Might
meet a robber or two. Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The
shadows of the mosques along the pillars; priest with a scroll rolled
up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. 1 pass on. Fading
gold sky. A mother watches from her doorway. She calls her children
home in their dark language. High wall: beyond strings twanged.
Night sky moon, violet, colour of Molly’s new garters. Strings.
Listen. A girl playing one of these instruments what do you call
them: dulcimers. I pass.

Probably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track
of the sun. Sunburst on. the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself.
What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the Freeman
leader; a homerulc sun rising up in the northwest from the lancway
behind the bank of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased smile, ikey
touch that: homerule sun rising up in the northwest.

He approached Larry O’Rourke’s. From the cellar grating floated
up the flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar
squirted out whiff's of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house,
however; just the end of the city traffic. For instance M'Auley’s down

SO

ihcrc: n. g. as position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the
North Circular from the cattle market to the quays value would go
up like a shot.

Bald head over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him
for an ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he is, sure
enough, my bold Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves
watching the aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket. Simon
Dedalus takes him off to a tec with his eyes screwed up. Do you know
what I’m going to tell you? What’s that, .Mr O’Rourke? Do you
know what? The Russians, they’d only be an eight o’clock breaktast
for the Japanese.

Stop and say a word; about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about
poor Dignam, Mr O’Rourke.

Turning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the
doorway;

— Good day, Mr O'Rourke.

— Good day to you.

— Lovely weather, sir.

— ’Tis all that.

Where do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates
from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar.
Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan
Tallons. Then think of the competition. General thirst. Good
puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Save it they
can’t. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three and carry five. What
is that? A bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the wholesale
orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the town travellers.
Square it with the boss and we’ll split the job, sec?

How much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten
barrels of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Ten. Fifteen.
He passed Saint Joseph’s, National school. Brats’ clamour. Windows
open. Fresh air helps memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen
opeecue rustyouvee double you. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk.
Inisharlc. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Bloom.

He halted before Dlugacz’s window, staring at the hanks of sausages,
polonies, black and white. Fifty multiplied by. The figures whitened
in his mind unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links
packed with forcemeat fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the
lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pig’s blood.

5 *

A kidney oozed bloodgouts on the \^■illo\^■patte^ned dibh: the last.
He stood bv tlie nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too,
calling tljc items from a slip in her hand. Chapped: washing soda.
And a pound and a half of Denny’s sausages. His eyes rested on her
\igoroiis hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is
oldish. New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms.
\\’fiaeking a carpet on tlic clothesline. She does whack it, by George.
The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack.

The ferretcyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off
with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there like a stallfed
heifer.

*

Pie took up a page from the pile of cut sheets. The model farm at
Kinnercth on the lakcshore of Tiberias. Can becotiK ideal winter
sanatorium. .Moses A-Iontefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall
round it, blurred cattle cropping. He held the page from him:
interesting: read it nearer, the blurred cropping cattle, the page
rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket
the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the
breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a
palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there’s a prime one, unpeeled
switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his
senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt
swinging whack by whack by whack.

The porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up
her prime sausages and made a red grimace.

— Now, my miss, he said.

She tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.

— Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For
you, please?

Mr Bloom pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if
she went slowly, behind her moying hams. Pleasant to see first thing
in the morning. Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines.
She stood outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right.
He sighed down his nose: they neyer understand. Sodachapped hands.
Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending her both
ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his
breast. For another: a constable off duty cuddled her in Eccles Lane.
They like them sizeable. Prime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman,
Tm lost in the wood.

52

— Threepence, please.

His hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a side-
pocket. Then it fetched up three coins trom his trousers’ pocket and
laid them on the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and
quickly slid, disc by disc, into the till.

— Thank you, sir. Another time.

A speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his
gaze after an instant. No: better not: another time.

—Good morning, he said, moving awav.

— Good morning, sir.

No sign. Gone. What matter?

He walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. .Agendath
Netaim; planter’s company. To purchase vast sandy tracts from
Turkish government and plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for
shade, fuel and construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields
north of Jaffa. You pay eight marks and they plant a dunam of land
for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper:
oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the
crop. Your name entered for life as owner in the book of the unio-u
Can pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments. Blcibtrcu-
strasse 34, Berlin, W. 1 5.

Nothing doing. Still an idea behind it.

He looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silvered powdered
olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning ripening. Olives are packed in
jars, eh? 1 have a few left from Andrews. .Molly spitting them out.
Knows the taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates.
Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still alive in Saint Kevin’s parade.
And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then.
.Molly in Citron’s baskctchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold
in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that,
heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They
fetched high prices too Moisei told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street:
pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that
way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on
the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling
them in soiled dungarees. There’s whatdoyoucallhim out of. How
do you? Doesn’t sec. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His
back is like that Norwegian captain’s. Wonder if I’ll meet him today.
Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.

53

A cloud began to cover the sun wholly slowly wholly. Grey. Far.

No, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the
dead sea; no fish, weedlcss, sunk deep in the earth. No wind would
lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they
called it raining down; the cities of the plain; Sodom, Gomorrah,
Edom, all dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old.
Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from
Cassidy’s clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people.
Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiply-
ing, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could
bear no more. Dead; an old woman’s; the grey sunken cunt of the
world.

Desolation.

Grey horror seared his flesh. - Folding the page into his pocket he
turned into Eccles Street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along
his veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well,
I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of
the bed. Must begin again those Sandow’s exercises. On the hands
down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why
is that? Valuation is only twcntycight. Towers, Battersby, North,
MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore
smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter.
Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.

Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley Road, swiftly,
in slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to
meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind.

Two letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stopped and
gathered them. Mrs Marion Bloom. His quick heart slowed at once.
Bold hand. Mrs Marion.

— Poldy!

Entering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through
warm yellow twilight towards her tousled head.

— Who arc the letters for?

He looked at them. Mullingar. Milly.

A letter for me from Milly, he said carefully, and a card to you.
And a letter for you.

He laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve
of her knees.

— Do you want the blind up?

54

Letting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw
her glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow.

— That do? he asked, turning.

She was reading the card, propped on her elbow.

— She got the things, she said.

He waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back
slowly with a snug sigh.

— Hurry up with that tea, she said. I’m parched.

— The kettle is boiling, he said.

But he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled
linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the fool ot the bed.

As he went down the kitchen stairs she called:

— Poldy!

—What.?

— Scald the teapot.

On the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He
scalded and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea,
tilting the kettle then to let water flow in. Having set it to draw, he
took off the kettle and crushed the pan flat on the live coals and
watched the lump of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the
kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him. Give her too much meat
she won’t mouse. Say they won’t eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let
the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the
sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers,
ringwise, from the chipped eggeup.

Then he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over.
Thanks: new tarn: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student:
Blazes Boylan’s seaside girls.

The tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachccup, sham crown
Derby, smiling. Silly Milly’s birthday gift. Only five she was then.
No w’ait: four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting
pieces of folded brown paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled,
pouring.

O, M'tlly Bloom, you are my darling.

You are my looking glass jrom night to morning.

Vd rather have you without a farthing

Than Katey Keogh with her ass and garden.

Poor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a

55

courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Molly off the
platforn^. And the little mirror in his silk hat. The night Milly
brought it into the parlour. O, look what I found in professor
Goodwin’s hat! All we laughed. Sex breaking out even then. Pert
little piece she was.

He prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted
the teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Every-
thing on it? Bread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes.
He carried it upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle.

Nudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and
set it on the chair by the bedhead.

— What a time you were, she said.

She set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow
on the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her
large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat’s udder.
The warmth of her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the
fragrance of the tea she poured.

A strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In
the act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.

— Who was the letter from? he asked.

Bold hand. Marion.

— O, Boylan, she said. He’s bringing the programme.

— What are you singing?

— La ci darem with J. C. Doyle, she said, and Love's Old Sweet
Song.

Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense
leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater.

— Would you like the window open a little?

She doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:

— What time is the funeral?

— Eleven, I think, he answered. 1 didn’t see the paper.

Following the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled
drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped
round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.

— No: that book.

Other stocking. Her petticoat.

— It must have fell down, she said.

He felt here and there. Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder if she pro-
nounces that right: voglio. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He

56

stopped and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against cIk

bulge of the orangckeyed chamberpot.

—Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There’s a word 1 wanted

to ask you.

She swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle
and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to
search the text with the hairpin till she reached the word.

— Met him what? he asked.

—Here, she said. What does that mean?

He leaned downwards and read near her polished thumbnail.

— Metempsychosis?

Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home?

— Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It s Greek: trom the Greek.
That means the transmigration of souls.

— O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.

He smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eye. The same young
eyes. The first night after the charades. Dolphin s Barn. He turned
over the smudged pages. Ruby: the F ride oj the Ring. Hello. Illustra-
tion. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the
on the floor naked. Sheet kindly lent. The monster Mafei desisted
and flung his victim from him with an oath. Cruelty behind it all.
Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler’s. Had to look the
Mob gaping. Break your neck and we’ll break our sides. Families
of them. Bone them young so they metempsychosis. That we live
after death. Our souls. That a man’s soul after he dies. Dignam s
soul. . .

— Did you finish it? he asked.

Yes, she said. There’s nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the

first fellow all the time?

— Never read it. Do you want another?

—Yes. Get another of Paul de Rock’s. Nice name he has.

She pour.ed more tea into her cup, watching its flow sidew'ays.

Must get that Capel street library book renewed or they’ll write to
Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that s the word.

—Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another
body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation.
That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some
other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember

their past lives.

57

J he >luggish LTCiini wound lurdling '-pir;ils through her tea. Better
remind lier ot tlie word: metcmpsvthosib. An example would be
better. .'\n example.

riie Hath oj the Syniph OAcr the bed. Given away w ith the Easter
number ot Photo Hits-. Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before
you put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair dow n: slimmer. I'hree
atid six I ga\ e tor the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed.
Naked nymphs: Greece: and for instance all the people that lived then.

He turned the pages back.

— -Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it.

I hey used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree,
tt)r instance. W hat they called nymphs, for example.

Her spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her,
inhaling through her arched nostrils.

— There’s a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the
fire?

— 'I'he kidney! he cried suddenly.

He fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his
toes against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell,
stepping hastily dow'n the stairs w'ith a flurried stork’s legs. Pungent
smoke shot up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a
prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle
on its back. Only a little burned. He tossed it off the pan on to a
plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it.

Cup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf.
He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a
forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant
meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of
bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was
that about some young student and a picnic? He creased out the letter
at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of
bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth.

Dearest Papli,

Thanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me
splendid. Everyone says I’m quite the belle in my new tarn. I got
mummy’s lovely box of creams and am writing. They arc lovely. I
am getting on swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan
took one of me and Mrs w’ill send w'hen developed. Wc did great

58

biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beet to the heels were in. We art-
going to lough Owel on Monday with a tew friends to make a scrap
picnic. Give my love to muminv and to yourself a big kiss and
thanks. I hear them at the piano dow nstairs. 1 here is to be a concert
in the Grevillc Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes
here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big
swells he sings Boylan’s (I was on the pop of writing Blazes Boylan s)
song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Milly sends my best
respects. Must now close with fondest love.

Your fond daughter, .Millv.

P. S. Excuse bad writing, am in a hurry. Byby. M.

Fifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first
birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer
morning she was born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Dcnzillc
street. Jolly old woman. Lots of babies she must have helped into the
world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy wouldn’t live. Well,
God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would be eleven now if he
had lived.

His vacant face stared pitying at the postscript. Excuse bad writing.
Hurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her
in the XL Caf^ about the bracelet. Wouldn’t eat her cakes or speak
or look. Saucebox. He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and
ate piece after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much.
Still, she might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He drank
a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter
again; twice.

O well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing
has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A
wDd piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny.
Ripening now. Vain; very.

He smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I
caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red.
Anarmic a little. Was given milk too long. On the Erins King that
day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit
funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.

Ai/ dimpled cheeks and curls.

Tour head it simply swirls.

59

Seaside girU. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers’ pockets,
jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says,
f’icr with lamps, summer evening, band.

Those girls, those girls.

Those lovely seaside girls.

Milly too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs
Marion. Reading lying back now, counting the strands of her hair,
smiling, braiding.

A soft qualm regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will
happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can’t move. Girl’s sweet light lips.
Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless
to move now. Lips kissed, kissing kissed. Full gluey woman’s lips.

Better where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog
to pass the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday,
only two and six return. Six weeks off however. Might work a press
pass. Or through M'Coy.

The cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained
paper, nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him,
mewing. Wants to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open.
Let her wait. Has the fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was
washing at her ear with her back to the fire too.

He felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood
up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.

— Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I’m ready.

Heaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs
to the landing.

A paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking
just* as I’m.

In the table drawer he found an old number of Titbits. He folded it
under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up
in soft bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.

Listening, he heard her voice;

— Come, come, pussy. Come.

He went out through the backdoor into the garden; stood to listen
towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to
dry. The maid was in the garden. Fine morning.

He bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the
wall. Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers.

6o

Want to manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of
sulphur. All soil like that without dung. Household slops. Loam,
what is this that is? The hens in the next garden: their droppings are
very good top dressing. Best of all though are the cattle, especially
when they arc fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Best thing to
clean ladies’ kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole
place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have tresh

greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or blue-

bottle here Whitmonday.

He walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it

back on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny, I don t

remember that. Hallstand too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak.
Picking up the letters. Drago’s shopbell ringing. Queer I was just
thinking that moment. Brown brilliantined hair over his collar, just
had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning.
Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James Stephens they
say. O’Brien.

Deep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agenda what is it? Now, my
miss. Enthusiast.

He kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not
to get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his
head under the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of
mouldy limewash and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting
down he peered through a chink up at the nextdoor window. The
king was in his countinghousc. Nobody.

Asquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper turning its pages
over on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry.
Keep it a bit. Our prize titbit. Matcham's Masterstroke, Written by
Mr Philip Bcaufoy, Playgoers’ club, London. Payment at the rate
of one guinea a column has been made to the writer. Three and a half.
Three pounds three. Three pounds thirteen and six.

Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding
but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding,
he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as 'he read, reading
still patiently that slight constipation of yesterday qui^c gone. Hope
it’s not too big bring on piles again. No, just right.-So. Ah! Costive
one tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or
touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now.
Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell.

Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks oj the masterstroke by 'which he
won the laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in
hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and,
while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who
had v^•ritten it and received payment of three pounds thirteen and six.

Might manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Bloom. Invent a
story for some proverb which? Time I used to try jotting down on
my cuff what she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked
myself shaving. Biting her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt.
Timing her. 9.15. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had
Grelta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb?
9.24. I’m swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent
leatlicr of her boot.

Rubbing smartly in turn each w’elt against her stocking calf.
Morning after the bazaar dance when May’s band played Ponchielli’s
dance of the hours. Explain that morning hours, noon, then evening
coming on, then night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first
night. Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that Boylan
well off? He has money. Why? I noticed he had a good smell off his
breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind
of music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her
handglass briskly on her w'oollcn vest against her full wagging bub.
Peering into it. Lines in her eyes. It wouldn’t pan out somehow.

Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then black with
daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea pink, then golden, then grey,
then black. Still true to life also. Day, then the night.

He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it.
Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He
pulled back the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the
gloom into the air.

In the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully
his black trousers, the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What
time is the funeral? Better find out in the paper.

A creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of George’s
church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.

Heigho! Heighol

Heighol Heigho!

Heigho! Heighol
62

Quarter to. There again; the overtone following through the air.
third.

Poor Dignatn!

^ By LORRIES ALONG SIR JOHN KOCERSON’S QUAY MR BLOOM WALKED

soberly, past Windmill lane, Lcask’s the linseed crusher’s, the postal
telegraph office. Could have given that address too. And past the
sailors’ home. He turned from the morning noises of the quayside
and walked through Lime street. By Brady’s cottages a boy for the
skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked, smolung a chewed fagbutt. A
smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly
bolding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won t
grow. O let himl His life isn’t such a bed of roses! Waiting outside
pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: w’on i be
many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed the frowning face
of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Alcph, Beth. And past Nichols’ the
undertaker’s. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Corny Kelleher
bagged that job for O’Neill’s. Singing with his eyes shut. Corney.
Met her once in the park. In the dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her
name and address she then told with my looraloom tooraloom tay.
O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a whatyoumaycall. With
my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom.

In Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and
Oriental Tea Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets:
choice blend, finest qudity, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must
get some from Tom Kernan. Couldn’t ask him at a funeral, though.
While his eyes still read blandly he took off his liat quietly inhaling his
hairoil and sent his right hand with slow grace over his brow and hair.
Very warm morning. Under their dropped lids his eyes found the
tiny how of the leather headband inside his high grade ha. Just there.
His right hand came down into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found
quickly a card behind the headband and transferred it to his w’aistcoat
pocket.

So warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over again:
choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely
spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about

63

on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is
it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing around in the sun, in dolce jar
nietue. Not doing a hand’s turn all day. Sleep six months out of
twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy.
Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. i\zotes. Hothouse in Botanic
gardens. Sensitive plants. Waterlilics. Petals too tired to. Sleeping
sickness in the air. Walk on roseleavcs. Imagine trying to eat tripe
and cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere?
Ah, in the dead sea, floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol
open. Couldn’t sink if you tried; so thick with salt. Because the
weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal
to the weight of the. Or is it the volume is equal of the weight? It’s
a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his finger-
joints, teaching. The college curriculum. Cracking curriculum.
What is weight really when you say the weight? Thirtytwo feet per
second, per second. Law of falling bodies; per second, per second.
They all fall to the ground. The earth. It’s the force of gravity of
the earth is the weight.

He turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk
with her sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the
folded Freeman from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise
in a baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg.
Careless air: just drop in to sec. Per second, per second. Per second
for every second it means. From the curbstone he darted a keen glance
through the door of the postofficc. Too late box. Post here.
No-onc. In.

He handed the card through the brass grill.

— ^Are there any letters for me? he asked.

While the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the
recruiting poster with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip
of his baton against his nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No
answer probably. Went too far last time.

The postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with
a letter. He thanked and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope.

Henry Flower, Esq.

c /o P. O. Westland Row,
City.

Answered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket,

64

reviewing again the boldiers on parade. \\ here s old Tweedy s regi
ment? Castoff soldier. There: bearskin cap and hackle plume. No,
he’s a grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There he is: royal Dublin fusiliers.
Redcoats. Too showy. That must be why the women go after them.
Uniform. Easier to enlist and drill. Maud Gonne’s letter about taking
them off O’Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital.
Griffith’s paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal
disease: overseas or halfscasover empire. Half baked they look:
hypnotised like. Eyes front. .Mark time. Table: able. Bcd:cd. The
King’s own. Never see him dressed up as a fireman or a bobby. A

mason, yes.

He strolled out of the postofficc and turned to the right, lalk: as
if that would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a
forefinger felt its way under the flap of the envelope, nppmg it open
in jerks. Women will pay a lot of heed, I don’t think. His fingers
drew forth the letter and crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Some-
thing pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair? No.

M'Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate

company when you.

—Hello, Bloom. Where arc you off to?

— Hello, .M'Coy. Nowhere in particular.

— How’s the body?

— Fine. How arc you?

— ^Just keeping alive, M‘Coy said.

His eyes on the black tic and clothes he asked with low respect:

—Is there any . . . no trouble I hope? I see you’re. . .

— O no, Mr Bloom said. Poor Dignam, you know. The funeral

is today.

—To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time?

A photo it isn’t. A badge maybe.

— E . . . eleven, Mr Bloom answered. . . , , ,

-I must try to get out there, M‘Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only
heard it last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know
Hoppy?

IcROW

Mr Bloom gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the
door of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well.
She stood stUl, waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her,
searched his pockets for change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll

6S

collar, warm tor a day like this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless
stand of her with her hands in those patch pockets. Like that haughty
creature at tiie polo match. Women all for caste till you touch the
spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The
honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once
take the starch out of her.

— I was with Bob Doran, he’s on one of his periodical bends, and
what do you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway’s we
were.

Doran, Lyons in Conway’s. She raised a gloved hand to her hair.
In came Hoppy. Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing
far from beneath his veiled eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine
in the glare, the braided drums. Clearly I can see today. Moisture
about gives long sight perhaps. Talking of one thing or another.
Lady’s hand. Which side will she get up?

— And he said: thing about our poor friend Paddy! What Paddy?

I said. Poor little Paddy Dignam, he said.

Off to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with
laces dangling. Wellturncd foot. What is he fostering over that
change for? Sees me looking. Eye out for other fellow always. Good
fallback. Two strings to her bow.

— W hy? I said. What’s wrong with him? I said.

Proud: rich: silk stockings.

— Yes, Mr Bloom said.

He moved a little to the side of M’Coy’s talking head. Getting up
in a minute.

—What’s wrong with him? he said. He’s dead^ he said. And, faith,
he filled up. Is it Paddy Dignam? I said. I couldn’t believe it when
I heard it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was
it in the Arch. y‘ rr, he said. He s gone. He died on Monday^ poor fellow.

Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!

A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.

Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnosc. Feels locked out of it. Paradise
and the peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl
in Eustace street hallway Monday was it settling her garter. Her
friend covering the display of. Esprit de corps. Well, what arc you
gaping at?

— Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone.

— One of the best, M'Coy said.

66

The tram passed. They drove oft towards the Loop Line bridge,
her rich gloved hand on tlie steel grip. Flicker, Bicker; the laceflare
of her hat in the sun: flicker, flick.

— Wife well, I suppose? M‘Coy‘s changed voice said.

— O yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.

He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:

What is home 'without
Plumtree's Potted Meat?
Incomplete.

With it an abode oj bliss.

— My missus has just got an engagement. At least it’s not settled
yet.

Valise tack again. By the way no harm. Tm off that, thanks.

Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.

— My wife too, he said. She’s going to sing at a swagger affair in
the Ulster hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.

— That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who’s getting
it up?

Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating
bread and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by
sevens. Dark lady and fair man. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of
envelope.

Love's

Old

Svseet

Song

Conus lo-ve' s old, . ,

— It’s a kind of a tour, don’t you see? Mr Bloom said thoughtfully.
Sweet song. There’s a committee formed. Part shares and part profits.
M'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.

— O well, he said. That’s good news.

He moved to go.

— Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking
around.

—Yes, Mr Bloom said.

— Tell you what, M'Coy said. You might put down my name at

67

the funeral, will you? I’d like to go but i mightn’t be able, you sec.
I'here’s a drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and then the
> oroncr and myself would have to go down if the body is found. You
just shove in my name if I’m not there, w'ill you?

— I’ll do that, Mr Bloom said, moving to get ofl. 'I'hat’ll be all
right.

— Right, .M'Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I’d go if I
possibly could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M'Coy will do.

— That will be done, Mr Bloom answered firmly.

Didn’t catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft
mark. I’d like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather.
Capped corners, riveted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley
lent hiin his lor the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never
heard tidings of it from that good day to this.

IVIr Bloom, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus
has just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice
enough in its way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me,
don’t you know'? In the same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle
that would. Can’t he hear the difference? Think he’s that way
inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow. Thought that Belfast
would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up there doesn’t get worse.
Suppose she wouldn’t let herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and
my wife.

Wonder is he pimping after me?

-Mr Bloom stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multi-
coloured hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane’s Ginger Ale (Aromatic).
Clery’s summer sale. No, he’s going on straight. Hello. Leah
tonight; Mrs Bandman Palmer. Like to sec her in that again. Hamlet
she played last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman.
Why Ophelia committed suicide? Poor papa! How he used to talk
about Kate Bateman in that! Outside the Adclphi in London waited
ail the afternoon to get in. Year before I was bom that was; sixtyfivc.
And Ristori in Vienna. What is this the right name is? By Mosenthal
it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was always talking about where
the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his
face.

— N; than’s voice! His son’s voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who
left his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the
house of his father and left the God of his father.

68

Every word is so deep, Leopold.

Poor papa! Poor man! I’m glad I didn’t go into the room to look
at his face. That day! O dear! O dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was
the best for him.

Mr Bloom went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of
the hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I
hadn’t met that M‘Coy fellow.

He came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently
champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by,
amid the sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor
jugginses! Damn all they know or care about anything with their long
noses stuck in nosebags. Too full for words. Still they get their feed
all right and their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black guttapercha
wagging limp between their haunches. .Might be happy all the same
that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very
irritating.

He drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper
he carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.

He passed the cabman’s shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies,
all weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. Voglio t
non. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying
syllables as they pass. He hummed;

La ci darem la mano
La la lala la la.

He turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted
in the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade’s timberyard. Piled
balks. Ruins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a
hopscotch court with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near
the timberyard a squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw
with a cunnythumb. A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from
her warm sill. Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of
his mantle not to wake her. Open it. And once I played marbles
when I went to that old dame’s school. She liked mignonette. Mrs
Ellis’s. And Mr.? He opened the letter within the newspaper.

A flower. I think it’s a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not

annoyed then? What does she say?

69

Dear Henry,

1 got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am
sorry you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps?
I am awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that.
I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other word.
Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word. Are you not
happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could
do something for you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I
often think of the beautiful name you have. Dear Henry, when will
we meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I have never felt
myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad about. Please
write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do not I
will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty
boy, if you do not write. O how I long to meet you. Henry dear,
do not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. Then I
will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling. I have such a bad
headache today and write by return to your longing

Martha.

P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want
to know.

He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell
and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it
because no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down.
Then, walking slowly forward, he read the letter again, murmuring
here and there a word. Angry tulips with you darling manflower
punish your cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long
violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty night-
stalk wife Martha’s perfume. Having read it all he took it from the
newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket.

Weak joy opened his lips. Changed since the 6rst letter. Wonder
did she write it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family
like me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the
rosary. Thank you: not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then
running round corners. Bad as a row with Molly. Cigar has a cooling
effect. Narcotic. Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish:
afraid of words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit
at a time.

Fingering stiU the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it.

70

Common pin, ch? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes some-
where: pinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have.
No roses without thorns.

Flat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night
in the Coombe, linked together in the rain.

0, Mairy lost the pin oj her dnrwers.

She didn't know what to do
To keep it up
To keep it up.

It? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or
sitting all day typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What
perfume does your wife use? Now could you make out a thing like
that? .

To keep it up.

Manha, Mary. I saw that piaurc somewhere I forget now old
master or faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking.
Mysterious. Also the two sluts in the Coombe W’ould listen.

To keep it up,

Nice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll
there: quiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you
have been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was
getting the supper: fruit, olives, lovely cool water out of the well
stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper
goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big
dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence.
Long long long rest.

Going under the railway arch he took out the envelope, lore
it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The
shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter then all
sank.

Henry Flower, You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds
in the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a
sevenfigure cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you
the money to be made out of porter. Still the other brother lord
Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin
breeds lice or vermin. A million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence
a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and

7 *

fourpence a gallon of porter. One and four into twenty: fifteen about.
Yes, exactly. F ifteen millions of barrels of porter.

\N hat am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the
same.

An ijicoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after
coach. Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned
inside. 'J'hc bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out,
flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a
lazy pooling swirl ot liqvior bearing along wideleaved flowers of its
froth.

He had reached the open backdoor of .All Hallows. Stepping into
the porch he dofled his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked
it again behind the leather headband. Damn it. I niight have tried
to work M'Coy for a pass to Mullingar.

Same notice on the door. Sermon by tlie very reverend John
Conmcc S. J. on saint Peter Claver and the African mission. Save
China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee.
Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Prayers
for the conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost
unconscious. 'I he protestants the same. Convert Dr. William J.
Walsh D. D. to the true religion. Buddha their god lying on his
side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek.
Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross.
Clever idea Saint Patrick the shamrock. Chopsticks? Conmee:
Martin Cunningham knows him: distinguished looking. Sorry I
didn’t work him about getting Molly into the choir instead of that
Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn’t. They’re taught that.
He’s not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to
baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing.
Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced,
listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.

The cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps,
pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rcre.

Something going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet
place to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the
hour to slow music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven.
Women knelt in the benches with crimson halters round their necks,
heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altar rails. The priest went along
by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped

72

at each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (arc they in
water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head
sank. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down
to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next
one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus. Body.
Corpse, Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice tor the
dying. 7 'hcy don’t seem to chew it; only swallow it down. Rum idea:
eating bits of a corpse why the cannibals cotton to it.

He stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one
by one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated
himself in its corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we
have to wear. We ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They
were about him here and there, with heads still bowed in their crimson
halters, waiting for it to melt in their stomachs. Something like those
ma22oth: it’s that sort of bread; unleavened shewbread. Look at
them. Now' I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes,
bread of angels it’s called. There’s, a big idea behind it, kind of
kingdom of God is within you feel. First communicants. Hokypoky
penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, same in the
theatre, all in the same sw-im. They do. I’m sure of that. Not so
lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a big sprccish. Let off
steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of
oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow
asleep near that confession box. Hence those snores. Blind faith.
Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls ail pain. Wake this time
next year.

He saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel
an instant before it, showing a large grey bootsolc from under the
lace affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn’t
know what to do to. Bald spot behind. Letters on his back I. N. R. I.?
No: I. H. S. Molly told me one time I asked her. I have sinned: or
no; I have suffered, it is. And the other one? Iron nails ran in.

Meet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn
up with a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She
might be here with a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing
all the same on the sly. Their character. That fellow that turned
queen’s evidence on the invincibles he used to receive the, Carey was
his name, the communion every morning. This very church. Peter
Carey. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of. Denis Carey. And just

73

imagine tliat. Wife and ^.ix children at home. And plotting that
murder all the time. Those crawthumpers, now that’s a good name
tor them, there’s always something shiftylooking about them. They’re
not straight men of business either. O no she’s not here; the flower:
no, no. By the w ay did I tear up that envelope? Yes: under the bridge.

The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs
smartly. Wine. xMakes it more aristocratic than for example if he
drank what they are used to Guinness’s porter or some temperance
beverage Wheatley’s Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane’s
ginger ale (aromatic). Doesn’t give them any of it: shew wine: only
the other. Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they’d
have one old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a
drink. Queer the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly
right that is.

Mr Bloom looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any
music. Pity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew
how to make that instrument talk, the vibrato: fifty pounds a year
they say he had in Gardiner street. Molly was in fine voice that day,
the Stabat Mater of Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first.
Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don’t keep us all night over it. Music they
wanted. Footdrill stopped. Could hear a pin drop. I told her to
* pitch her voice against that corner. I could feel the thrill in the air,
the full, the people looking up:

Quis est homo!

Some of that old sacred music is splendid. Mercadante: seven last
words. Mozart’s twelfth mass: the Gloria in that. Those old popes
were keen on music, on art and statues and pictures of all kinds.
Palestrina for example too. They had a gay old time while it lasted.
Healthy too chanting, regular hours, then brew liqueurs. Benedictine.
Green Chartreuse. Still, having eunuchs in their choir that was
coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to
hear after their own strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they
wouldn’t feel anything after. Kind of a placid. No worry. Fall into
flesh don’t they? Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch.
One way out of it.

He saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about
and bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr
Bloom glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen
hats. Stand up at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their

74

knees again and he sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came
down from the altar, holding the thing out from him, and he and the
massboy answered each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down and
began to read off a card:

— O God, our refuge and our strength. . .

Mr Bloom put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw
them the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass.’
Gloria and immaculate virgin. Joseph her spouse. Peter and Paul.
More interesting if you understood w’hat it was all about. Wonderful
organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone
wants to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please.
Great weapon in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman
dying to. And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha?
And why did you.^ Look down at her ring to find an excuse. Whisper-
ing gallery wdls have ears. Husband learn to his surprise. God’s little
joke. Then out she comes. Repentance skindeep. Lovely shame.
Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers, incense, candles
melting. Hide her blushes. Salvation army blatant imitation. Re-
formed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the Lord.
Squarehcaded chaps those must be in Rome; they work the whole
show. And don’t they rake in the money too.^ Bequests also: to the
P. P. for the time being in his absolute discretion. Masses for the
repose of my soul to be said publicly with open doors. Monasteries and
convents. The priest in the Fermanagh will case in the witness box.
No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for everything. Liberty
and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of the
church: they mapped out the whole theology of it.

The priest prayed:

— Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict.
Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may
God restrain him, we humbly pray): and do thou, O prince of the
heavenly host, by the power of God thrust Satan down to hell and
with him those other wicked spirits who wander through the world
for the ruin of souls.

The priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over.
The women remained behind: thanksgiving.

Better be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the
plate perhaps. Pay your Easter duty.

He stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open

75

all the time. Women enjoy it. Annoyed if you don’t. Why didn’t
you tell me before. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there’s a
(whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked.
Glimpses of the moon. Still like you better untidy. Good job it
wasn’t farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle
and out through the main door into the light. He stood a moment
unseeing by the cold black marble bowl while before him and behind
two worshippers dipped furtive hands in the low tide of holy water.
Trams: a car of Prescott’s dyeworks: a widow in her weeds. Notice
because I’m in mourning myself. He covered himself. How goes
the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. Better get that lotion made
up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny’s in Lincoln place.
Chemists rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to
stir. Hamilton Long’s, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot
churchyard near there. Visit some day.

He walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the
other trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral
affair. O well, poor fellow, it’s not his fault. When was it I got it
made up last? Wait. I changed a sovereign I remember. First of the
month it must have been or the second. O he can look it up in the
prescriptions book.

The chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he
seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher’s
stone. The alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement.
Lethargy then. Why? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually
changes your character. Living all the day among herbs, ointments,
disinfectants. All his alabaster lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist.
Fol. Laur. Tc Virid. Smell almost cure you like the dentist’s doorbell.
Doctor whack. He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or
emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a
bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to
chloroform you. Test; turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform.
Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovcphiltrcs. Paragoric
poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons
the only cures. Remedy where you least expect it. Clever of
nature.

— About a fortnight ago, sir?

— Yes, Mr Bloom said.

He waited by the counter, inhaling the keen reek of drugs, the dusty

76

dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your
aches and pains.

— Sweet almond oil and tincture ot benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and
then orangeflower water. . .

It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.

— .And white wax also, he said.

Brings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up
to her eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in
my cuffs. Those homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for
the teeth: nettles and rainwater; oatmeal they say steeped in butter-
milk. Skinfood. One of the old queen’s sons, duke of .Albany was it?
had only one skin. Leopold yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and
pimples to make it worse. But you want a perfume too. What perfume
does your? Peau d'Espagne. That orangeflower. Pure curd soap.
Water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. l ime to get a bath
round the corner. Hammam, Turkish. Massage. Dirt gets rolled
up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I.
Do it in the bath. Curious longing 1. Water to w-atcr. Combine
business with pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all
day. Funeral be rather glum.

— Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you
brought a bottle?

— No, Mr Bloom said. Make it up, please. I’ll call later in the day
and I’ll take one of those soaps. How much arc they?

— Fourpcncc, sir.

Mr Bloom raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.

— rii take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.

— Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you
come back.

— Good, Mr Bloom said.

He strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit,
the coolwrappered soap in his left hand.

At his armpit Bantam Lyons’ voice and hand said:

— Hello, Bloom, what’s the best news? Is that today’s? Show us a
minute.

Shaved off his moustache again, by Jovcl Long cold upper lip.
To look younger. He docs look balmy. Younger than I am.

Bantam Lyons’ yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton.
Wants a wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have

77

you used Pears’ soap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants
oiling.

— I want to see about that French horse that’s running today.
Bantam Lyons said. Where the bugger is it?

He rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar.
Barber’s itch. Tight collar he’ll lose his hair. Better leave him the
paper and get shut of him.

— You can keep it, Mr Bloom said.

— Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo.
.Maximum the second.

— I was just going to throw it away, Mr Bloom said.

Bantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.

— What’s that? his sharp voice said.

— I say you can keep it, Mr Bloom answered. I was going to throw
it away that moment.

Bantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread
sheets back on Mr Bloom’s arms.

— I’ll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.

He sped off towards Conway’s corner. God speed scut.

Mr Bloom folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the
soap in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed
of it lately. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for
large tender turkey. Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Jack
Fleming embezzling to gamble then smuggled off to America. Keeps
a hotel now. They never come back. Flcshpots of Egypt.

He walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind
you of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today
I see. He eyed the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park:
cyclist doubled up like a cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they
had made it round like a wheel. Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports:
and the hub big: college. Something to catch the eye.

There’s Hornblowcr standing at the porter’s lodge. Keep him on
hands: might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr
Hornblowcr? How do you do, sir?

Heavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket
weather. Sit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They
can’t play it here. Duck for six wickets. Still Captain Buller broke a
window in the Kildare street club with a slog to square leg. Donny-
brook fair more in their line. And the skulls we were acracking when

78

M'Carthy took the floor. Hcatvs avc. Won’t last. .'Always passing, the
stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all.

Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle
tepid stream. This is my body.

He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of
warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk
and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward,
Icmonycllow: his navel, bud of flesh; and saw the dark tangled curls of
his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of
thousands, a languid floating flower.

Martin Cunningham, first, poked his silkhatted head into
the creaking carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself. .Mr Power
stepped in after him, curving his height with care.

— Come on, Simon.

— After you, Mr Bloom said.

Mr Dedalus covered himself quickly and got in, saying:

— Yes, yes.

— Are we all here now? Martin Cunningham asked. Come along
Bloom.

Mr Bloom entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door
to after him and slammed it tight till it shut tight. He passed an arm
through the armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriage
window at the lowered blinds of the avenue. One dragged aside: an
old woman peeping. Nose whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking
her stars she was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they take in
a corpse. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Job
seems to suit them. Huggermugger in corners. Slop about in slipper-
ilappers for fear he’d wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out.
MoUy and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Pull it more to your side.
Our windingsbeet. Never know who will touch you dead. Wash and
shampoo. 1 believe they clip the nails and the hair. Keep a bit in an
envelope. Grow all the same after. Unclean job.

All waited. Nothing -was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably.
I am sitting on something hard. Ah, that soap in my hip pocket.
Better shift it out of that. Wait for an opportunity.

79

Ail waited. Then wheels were heard from in front turning: then
nearer: then horses’ hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move,
creaking and swaying. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started
behind. The blinds of the avenue passed and number nine with its
craped knocker, door ajar. At walking pace.

1 licy waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were
passing along the tramtracks. Triionville road. Quicker. The wheels
rattled rolling over the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook
rattling in the doorframes.

— What way is he taking us? Mr Power asked through both
vN’indows.

— Irishtown, Martin Cunningham said. Ringsend. Brunswick
street.

Mr Dedalus nodded, looking out.

— I'hat’s a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not
died out.

.All watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by
passers. Respect. 7 he carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the
smoother road past Watery lane. Mr Bloom at gaze saw a lithe young
man, clad in mourning, a wide hat.

— There’s a friend of yours gone by, Dedalus, he said.

— Who is that?

— Your son and heir.

— Where is he? Mr Dedalus said, stretching over across.

The carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup
roadway before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and,
swerving back to the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering
wheels. Mr Dedalus fell back, saying:

— Was that Mulligan cad with him? His fidus Achates?

— No, Mr Bloom said. He was alone.

— Down with his aunt Sally, I suppose, Mr Dedalus said, the
Goulding faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissic, papa's
little lump of dung, the wise child that knows her own father.

Mr Bloom smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros the
bottlcworks. Dodder bridge.

Richie Goulding and the legal bag. Goulding, Collis and Ward he
calls the firm. His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was.
Waltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morn-
ing, the landlady’s two hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage

all night. Beginning to tell on him now: that backache of his, I fear.
Wife ironing his back. Thinks he’ll cure it with pills. .All breadcrumbs
they arc. About six hundred per cent profit.

— He’s in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That
.Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruthan by all accounts.
His name stinks all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His
blessed mother I’ll make it my business to write a letter one of
those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is that will
open her eye as wide as a gate. I’ll tickle his catastrophe, believe
vou me.

He cried above the clatter of the wheels.

— I won’t have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counter-
jumper’s son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M‘Swincy’s.
Not likely.

He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr
Power’s mild face and Martin Cunningham’s eyes and beard, gravely
shaking. Noisy selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Some-
thing to hand on. If little Rudy had lived. Sec him grow up. Hear
his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My
son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a
chance. Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was
at the window, watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease
to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up. She had that cream gown
on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I’m
dying for it. How life begins.

Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside
her. I could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him indepen-
dent. Learn German too.

— Are we late? Mr Power asked.

— Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch.

Molly. MiUy. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O
jumping Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she’s a dear girl.
Soon be a woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes,
yes: a woman too. Life. Life.

The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying.

— Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power
said.

— He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn’t that squint troubling
him. Do you follow me?

8i

o

He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away
crustcrunibs from under his thighs.

— What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs?

— Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately,
Mr Power said.

All raised their thighs, eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless
leather ot the seals. Mr Dcdalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward
and said:

— Unless I’m greatly mistaken. W'hat do you think, .Martin?

— It struck me too, .Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feci my feet
quite clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.

Mr Dcdalus sighed resignedly.

— After all, he said, it’s the most natural thing in the world.

— Did Tom Kcrnan turn up? Martin Cunningham asked, twirling
the peak of his beard gently.

— Yes, Mr Bloom answered. He's behind with Ned Lambert and
Hynes.

— And Corny Kcllchcr himself? Mr Power asked.

— At the cemetery, Martin Cunningham said.

— I met M‘Coy this morning, Mr Bloom said. He said he’d try
to come.

The carriage halted short.

— What’s WTOng?

— We’re stopped.

—Where arc we?

Mr Bloom put his head out of the window.

— The grand canal, he said.

Gasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Milly
never got it. Poor children! Doubles them up black and blue in
convulsions. Shame really. Got off lightly with illness compared.
Only measles. Flaxseed tea. Scarlatina, induenza epidemics. Can-
vassing for death. Don’t miss this chance. Dogs’ home over there.
Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Leopold, is my last wish. Thy
will be done. We obey them in the grave. A dying scrawl. He
took It to heart, pined away. Quiet brute. Old men’s dogs usually
are,

A raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of
shower spray dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through

82 .

a colander. I thought it would. My boots were creaking I remember
now.

— The weather is changing, he said quietly.

— A pity it did not keep up fine, Martin Cunningham said.

— Wanted for the country, .Mr Power said. There’s the sun again
coming out.

Mr Dcdalus, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun,
hurled a mute curse at the sky.

— It’s as uncertain as a child’s bottom, he said.

— We’re off again.

The carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed
gently. Martin Cunningham twirled more quickly the peak of his beard.

— Tom Keman was immense last night, he said. And Paddy
Leonard taking him off to his face.

— O draw him out, Martin, Mr Power said eagerly. Wait till you
hear him, Simon, on Ben Dollard’s singing of The Croppy Boy

— Immense, Martin Cunningham said pompously. His singing oj
that simple ballad ^ Martin^ is the most trenchant rendering I ever heard
in the whole course oj my experience.

— Trenchant, Mr Power said laughing. He’s dead nuts on that.
And the retrospective arrangement.

— Did you read Dan Dawson’s speech? Martin Cunningham asked.

— I did not then, Mr Dcdalus said. Where is it?

— In the paper this morning.

Mr Bloom took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must
change for her.

— No, no, Mr Dcdalus said quickly. Later on, please.

Mr Bloom’s glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning
the deaths. Callan, Coleman, Dignam, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann,
Peake, what Peake is that? is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne’s?
no, Sexton, Urbright. Inked characters fast fading on the frayed
breaking paper. Thanks to the Little Flower. Sadly missed. To the
inexpressible grief of his. Aged 88 after a long and tedious illness.
Month’s mind. Quinlan. On whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.

It is now a month since dear Henry Jled
To his home up above in the sky
While his jamily weeps and mourns his loss
Hoping some day to meet him on high.

83

I tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read
it in the batli? He patted liis waistcoat pocket. There all right. Dear
Henry ried. Before niy patience are exhausted.

National school. .Meade’s yard. T ne liazard. Only two there now.
Noddirjg. Full as a tick. 'I'oo much bone in their skulls. The other
trotting round with a fare. i\n hour ago I was passing there. The
jar\ ies raised their hats.

pointsman’s back straightened itself upright suddenly against a
tramway standard by Mr Bloom’s window. Couldn’t they invent
something automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well
but that fellow w'ould lose his job then? Well but then another fellow
w ould get a job making the new invention?

Antient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buffsuit
with a crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning.
People in law, perhaps.

They went past the bleak pulpit of Saint Mark’s, under the railway
bridge, past the Queen’s theatre; in silence. Hoardings. Eugene
Stratton. Mrs Bandman Palmer. Could I go to sec Leah tonight, 1
wonder. I said I. Or the Lily oj Ktllarney? Elster Grimes Opera
company. Big powerful change. Wet bright bills for next week.
hurt on the Bristol. Martin Cunningham could work a pass for the
Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or two. As broad as it’s long.

He’s coming in the afternoon. Her songs.

Plasto s. Sir Philip Crampton’s memorial fountain bust. Who
was he?

How do you do? .Martin Cunningham said, raising his palm to
his brow in salute.

He doesn t sec us, Mr Power said. Yes, he does. How do you do?
— Who? Mr Dedalus asked.

Blazes Boylan, Mr Pow'er said. There he is airing his quiff.

Just that moment I was thinking.

Mr Dedalus bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank
the white disc of a straw hat flashed reply; passed.

Mr Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his
right hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they
she sees? Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive.
They sometimes feel w'hat a person is. Instinct. But a type like that.
My nails. I am just looking at them: well pared. And after; thinking
alone. Body getting a bit softy. I would notice that from remember-

84

ing. Whai causes that I suppose the skin can’t contract quickly
enough when the flesh falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is
there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing.
Shift stuck between the checks behind.

He clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his
vacant glance over their faces.

Mr Power asked:

— How is the concert tour getting on. Bloom?

— O very well, Mr Bloom said. I hear great accounts of it. It’s a
good idea, you sec. . .

— Arc you going yourself?

— Well no, Mr Bloom said. In point of fact I have to go down to
the county Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour
the chief towns. What you lose on one you can make up on the other.

— Quite so, Martin Cunningham said. Mary Anderson is up there
now.

— Have you good artists?

— Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Bloom said. O yes, we’ll have
all topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and John MacCormack I hope and. The
best, in fact.

— And Madame^ Mr Power said, smiling. Last but not least.

Mr Bloom unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and
clasped them. Smith O’Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers
there. Woman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns.
The carriage wheeling by Farrell’s statue united noiselessly their
unresisting knees.

Oot: a duUgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares,
his mouth opening: oot.

— Four bootlaces for a penny.

Wonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume
street. Same house as Molly’s namesake. Tweedy, crown solicitor for
Waterford. Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency.
Mourning too. Terrible comedown, poor wretch! Kicked about like
snuff at a wake. O’Callaghan on his last legs.

And Madame, Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to
clean. Doing her hair, humming: voglio e non vorrei. No: vorrei e non.
Looking at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. Mi trema un
poco il. Beautiful on that tre her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A
throstle. There is a word throstle that expressed that.

8S

His eyes passed lightly over Mr Power’s goodlooldng face. Greyish
over the ears. Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long
way. Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true
about the woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wdfe. Yet they say,
who w-as it told me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would
get played out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening
bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in
Jury’s. Or the Moira, was it?

They passed under the hugecloaked Liberator’s form.

Martin Cunningham nudged Mr Power.

— Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.

A tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the
corner of Elvery’s elephant house showed them a curved hand open
on his spine.

— In all his pristine beauty, Mr Power said.

Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:

— The devil break the hasp of your back!

Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window
as the carriage passed Gray’s statue.

— We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly.

His eyes met Mr Bloom’s eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:

— Well, nearly all of us.

Mr Bloom began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions’
faces.

— That’s an awfully good one that’s going the rounds about
Reuben J. and the son.

— About the boatman? Mr Power asked.

— Yes. Isn’t it awfully good?

— What is that? Mr Dedalus asked. I didn’t hear it.

— There was a girl in the case, Mr Bloom began, and he determined
to send him to the isle of Man out of harm’s way but when they were
both. . .

— What? Mr Dedalus asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy

IS It?

— Yes, Mr Bloom said. They were both on the way to the boat and
he tried to drown

— Drown Barabbas! Mr Dedalus cried. I wish to Christ he did]

Mr Power sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.

— No, Mr Bloom said, the son himself. ....

86

Martin Cunningham thwarted his speech rudely.

— Reuben J. and the son were piking it down the quay next the
river on their way to the isle of \Ian boat and the young chiscller
suddenly got loose and over the wall with him into the Liffey.

— For God’ sake! Mr Dedalus exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?

— Dead! Martin Cunningham cried. Not he! A boatman got a
pole and fished him out by the slack of the breeches and he W’as landed
up to the father on the quay. .VIore dead than alive. Half the town
was there.

— Yes, Mr Bloom said. But the funny part is

— And Reuben J., Martin Cunningham said, gave the boatman a
florin for saving his son’s life.

A stifled sigh came from under Mr Power’s hand.

— O, he did, Martin Cunningham affirmed. Like a hero. A silver
florin.

— Isn’t it awfully good? Mr Bloom said eagerly.

— One and cightpence too much, Mr Dedalus said drily.

Mr Power’s choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.

Nelson’s pillar.

— Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!

— We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Dedalus sighed.

— And then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn’t grudge us a
laugh. Many a good one he told himself.

— The Lord forgive me! Mr Pow'er said, w-iping his wet eyes with
his fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him
last and he w'as in his usual health that I’d be driving after him like
this. He’s gone from us.

— As decent a little man as ever w’orc a hat, Mr Dedalus said. He
went very suddenly.

— ‘■Breakdown, Martin Cunningham said. Heart.

He tapped his chest sadly.

Blazing face: redhot. Too much John Barleycorn. Cure for a red
nose. Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. .A lot of money he spent
colouring it.

Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.

— He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.

— The best death, Mr Bloom said.

Their wide open eyes looked at him.

— No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in
sleep.

No-one spoke.

Dead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents,
temperance hotel. Falconer’s railway guide, civil service college.
Gill’s, catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun
or wind. At night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage
of the late Father Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown.
Heart.

White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda
corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A
mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for
bachelors. Dun for a nun.

— Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child.

A dwarf’s face mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. Dwarf’s
body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society
pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby.
Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it’s healthy it’s from the
mother. If not the man. Belter luck next time.

— Poor little thing, Mr Dedalus said. It’s well out of it.

The carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle
his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.

— In the midst of life, Martin Cunningham said.

— But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his
own life.

Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put
it back.

— The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added.

—Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said deci-
sively. We must take a charitable view of it.

— They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said.

— It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said.

Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunning-
ham’s large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he
is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare’s face. Always a good word to say.
They have no mercy on that here or infanticide. Refuse christiii
burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the
grave. As if it wasn’t broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too
late. Found in the riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And

88

that awful drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time
after time and then pawning the furniture on him every Saturday
almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear the heart out of a
stone, that. Monday morning start afresh. Shoulder to the wheel.
Lord, she must have looked a sight that night, Dedalus told me he was
in there. Drunk about the place and capering with .Martin’s umbrella:

And they call me the jewel oj Asia,

OJ Asia,

The geisha.

He looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.

That afternoon of the inquest. The rcdlabellcd bottle on the table.
The room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight
through the slats of the Venetian blinds. I'he coroner’s cars, big and
hairy. Boots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw
like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the
bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For
my son Leopold.

No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.

The carriage rattled sw’iftly along Blessington street. Over the
stones.

— We arc going the pace, 1 think, Martin Cunningham said.

— God grant he doesn’t upset us on the road, .Mr Power said.

—I hope not, Martin Cunningham said. That will be a great race
tomorrow in Germany. The Gordon Bennett.

— Yes, by Jove, Mr. Dedalus said. That will be worth seeing, faith.

As they turned into Berkeley street a strectorgan near the Basin
sent over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has
anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead march from
Saul. He’s as bad as old Antonio. He left me on my ownio. Pirouette!
The Mater Misericordiae. Eccles street. My house down there. Big
place. Ward for incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady’s
Hospice for the dying. Dcadhouse handy underneath. Where old
Mrs Riordan died. They look terrible the women. Her feeding cup
and rubbing her mouth with the spoon. Then the screen round her
bed for her to die. Nice young student that was dressed that bite the
bee gave me. He’s gone over to the lying-in hospital they told me.
From one extreme to the other.

89

The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped.

— What*s wrong now?

A divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing,
slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their
clotted bony croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled
sheep bleating their fear.

— Emigrants, \Ir Power said.

— Huuuh! the drover’s voice cried, his switch sounding on their
rianks. Huuuh! Out of that!

Thursday of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe
sold them about twentyscven quid each. For Liverpool probably.
Roast beef for old England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then
the 6fth quarter is lost: all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to
a big thing in a year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts of the slaughter-
houses for tanneries, soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge works
now getting dicky meat off the train at Clonsilla.

The carriage moved on through the drove.

— I can’t make out why the corporation doesn’t run a tramline from
the parkgate to the quays, Mr Bloom said. All those animals could be
taken in trucks down to the boats.

— Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Martin Cunningham
said. Quite right. They ought to.

— Yes, Mr Bloom said, and another thing I often thought is to have
municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the
line out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and
carriage and all. Don’t you see what I mean?

— O that be damned for a story, Mr Dedalus said. Pullman car
and saloon diningroom.

— A poor lookout for Corny, Mr Power added.

— Why? Mr Bloom asked, turning to Mr Dedalus. Wouldn’t it be
more decent than galloping two abreast?

— Well, there’s something in that, Mr Dedalus granted.

— And, Martin Cunningham said, we wouldn’t have scenes like
(hat when the hearse capsized round Dunphy’s and upset the coffin on
to the road.

— That was terrible, Mr Power’s shocked face said, and the corpse
fell about the road. Terrible!

— First round Dunphy’s, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Gordon
Bennett cup.

90

— Praises be to God! Martin Cunningham said piously.

Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open.
Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown
habit too large for him. Red face; grey now. .Mouth fallen open.
Asking what’s up now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open.
Then the insides decompose quickly. .Much better to close up all the
orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.

— Dunphy’s, Mr Power announced as the carriage turned right.

Dunphy’s corner. Mourning coaches drawn up drowning their
grief. A pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect
we’ll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the
consolation. Elixir of life.

But suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut
him in the knocking about? He would and he wouldn’t, I suppose.
Depends on where. The circulation stops. Still some might 002c out
of an artery. It would be better to bury them in red: a dark red.

In silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse
trotted by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.

Crossguns bridge: the royal canal.

Water rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his
dropping barge between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a
slacktethered horse. Aboard of the Bugabu.

Their eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had
fioated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope
past beds of reeds, over slime, mudehoked bottles, carrion dogs.
Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see
Milly by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety.
Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady’s. Developing
waterways. James M‘Cann’s hobby to row me o’er the ferry. Cheaper
transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To
heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing. Come as a surprise,
Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down, lock by lock to Dublin. With
turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown strawhat,
saluting Paddy Dignam.

They drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.

•—I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Pow'er said.

— Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Dedalus said.

— How is that? Martin Cunningham said. Left him w'eeping I
suppose.

9 *

— Though lost to sight, Mr Dcdalus said, to memory dear.

The carriage steered left for Finglas road.

The stonecutter’s yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit
of land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm
hands, knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white
silence: appealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monu-
mental builder and sculptor.

Passed.

On the curbstone before Jimmy Geary the sexton’s an old tramp sat,
grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown
yawning boot. After life’s journey.

Gloomy gardens then went by, one by one: gloomy houses.

Mr Power pointed.

— That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.

— So it is, Mr Dcdalus said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got
him off. Murdered his brother. Or so they said.

— The crown had no evidence, Mr Power said.

— Only circumstantial, Martin Cunningham said. That’s the maxim
of the law. Better for ninetyninc guilty to escape than for one innocent
person to be wrongfully condemned.

They looked. Murderer’s ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered,
tcnantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully
condemned. Murder. The murderer’s image in the eye of the
murdered. They love reading about it. Man’s head found in a
garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she met her death. Recent
outrage. The weapon used. Murderer is still at large. Clues. A
shoelace. The body to be exhumed. Murder will out.

Cramped in this carriage. She mightn’t like me to come that way
without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them
once with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.

The high railings of Prospects rippled past their gaze. Dark
poplars, rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes
thronged amid the trees, white forms and fragments streaming by
mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air.

The felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Martin Cunning-
ham put out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door
open with his knee. He stepped out. Mr Power and Mr Dedalus
followed.

Change that soap now. Mr Bloom’s hand unbuttoned his hip

92

pocket swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner
handkerchief pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the
newspaper his other hand still held.

Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It’s all the same. Pall-
bearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.
Beyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and
fruit. Simnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead.
Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out.

He followed his companions. .Mr Kernan and Ned Lambert
followed, Hynes walking after them. Corny Kellchcr stood by the
opened hearse and took out the two wreaths. He handed one to the
bov.

\\ here is that child’s funeral disappeared to?

A team of horses passed from Finglas w'ith toiling plodding tread,
dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which
lay a granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted.

Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round
at it W’ith his plume skeow’ways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck,
pressing on a bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they
cart out here every day? Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day.
Then Mount Jerome for the protestants. Funerals all over the world
everywhere every minute. Shovelling them under by the cartload
doublcquick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world.

Mourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Lean-
jawed harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet aw-ry. Girl’s face
stained with dirt and tears, holding the woman’s arm looking up at
her for a sign to cry. Fish’s face, bloodless and livid.

The mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates.
So much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath.
First the stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Corny Kelleher and the
boy followed with their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the
brother in-law.

All walked after.

Martin Cunningham whispered:

— I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.

— What? Mr Power whispered. How so?

— His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered.
Had the Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to
Clare. Anniversary.

93

— O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned
himself!

He glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes
followed towards the cardinal’s mausoleum. Speaking.

— W as he insured? Mr Bloom asked.

— I believe so, Mr Kernan answered, but the policy was heavily
mortgaged. Martin is trying to get the youngster into Artanc.

— How many children did he leave?

— Five. Ned Lambert says he’ll try to gel one of the girls into
Todd’s.

— A sad case, Mr Bloom said gently. Five young children.

— A great blow to the poor w'ife, Mr Kernan added.

— Indeed yes, Mr Bloom agreed.

Has the laugh at him now.

ifle looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had
outlived him, lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One
must outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than
men in the world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope
you’ll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only. She would marry
another. Him? No. Yet w-ho knows after? Widowhood not the
thing since the old queen died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria
and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in the end she put
a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts. All for a
shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance. Some-
thing new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It
never comes. One must go first: alone under the ground: and lie no
more in her warm bed.

— How are you, Simon? Ned Lambert said softly, clasping hands.
Haven’t seen you for a month of Sundays.

— Never better. How are all in Cork’s own town?

— I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Ned
Lambert said. Same old six and cightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.

— And how is Dick, the solid man?

— Nothing between himself and heaven, Ned Lambert answered.

— By the holy Paul! Mr Dedalus said in subdued wonder. Dick
Tivy bald?

— Martin is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Ned Lambert
said, pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till
the insurance is cleared up.

94

— Yes, yes, Mr Dedalus said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in
front?

— Yes, Ned Lambert said, with the wife’s brother. John Henry
Menton is behind. He put down his name for a quid.

— I’ll engage he did, Mr Dedalus said. I often told poor Paddy Ik*
ought to mind that job. John Henry is not the worst in the world.

— How did he lose it? Ned Lambert asked. Liquor, what?

— Many a good man’s fault, Mr Dedalus said with a sigh.

They halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. .Mr Blootn
stood behind the boy with the wreath, looking down at his sleek
combed hair and the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew
collar. Poor boy! Was he there when the father? Both unconscious.
Lighten up at the last moment and recognise for the last time. .All
he might have done. I owe three shillings to O’Grady. Would he
understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the chapel. Which end
is his head?

After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened
light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow
candles at its corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kcllcher, laying
a wreath at each fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The
mourners knelt here and there in praying desks. Mr Bloom stood
behind near the font and, when all had knelt dropped carefully his
unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his right knee upon it.
He fitted his black hat gently on his left knee and, holding its brim,
bent over piously.

A server, bearing a brass bucket with something in it, came out
through a door. The whitesmocked priest came after him tidying his
stole with one hand, balancing with the other a little book against his
toad’s belly. Who’ll read the book? I, said the rook.

They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his
book with a fluent croak.

Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Domine-namine.
Bully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular Christian.
Woe betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter.
Burst sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a
belly on him like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man
finds. Hhhn: burst sideways.

— Non intres in judicium cum servo tuOy Domine.

Makes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin.

95

Requiem mass. Crape weepers. Blackedgcd notepaper. Your name
on the altarlist. Chilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there
all the morning in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next
please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells him up that way? Molly gets
■swelled after cabbage. Air ot the place mavbc. Looks full up of bad
gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers for
instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn
Brown. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ
hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to
let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes; blue. One whiff of
that and you’re a goner.

My kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That’s better.

1 he priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy s
bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end
and shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket.
As you were before you rested. It’s all written down: he has to
do it.

— Ef ne nos inducas in tentaiionem.

The ser\'cr piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it
would be better to have boy scr\'ants. Up to fifteen or so. After that
of course. . .

Holy water that w'as, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must
be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they
trot up. What harm if he could see what he was shaking it over.
Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children,
women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded business men,
consumptive girls with little sparrow’s breasts. All the year round he
prayed the same thing over them all and shook w'ater on top of them:
sleep. On Dignam now.

— In paradisum.

Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over
everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.

The priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server.
Corny Kelleher opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in,
hoisted the coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart.
Corny Kelleher gave one wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-
law. All followed them out of the sidedoors. into the mild grey air.
Mr Bloom came last, folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed
gravely at the ground till the coffincart W'heelcd off to the left. The

metal wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack
of blunt boots tollowed the barrow along a lane of sepulchres.

The ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn’t lilt here.

— The O’Connell circle, Mr Dedalus said about him.

Mr Power’s soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.

— He’s at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O’.
But his heart is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts arc buried
here, Simon!

— Her grave is over there, Jack, Mr Dedalus said. I’ll soon be
stretched beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.

Breaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a
little in bis walk. Mr Power took his arm.

— She’s better where she is, he said kindly.

— 1 suppose so, Mr Dedalus said with a weak gasp. I suppose she
is in heaven if there is a heaven.

Corny Kcllehcr stepped aside fromhis rank and allowed the mourners
to plod by.

— Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.

Mr Bloom closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.

— The others arc putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose
wc can do so too. We arc the last. This cemetery is a treacherous
place.

They covered their heads.

— The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don’t you
think.^ Mr Kernan said with reproof.

Mr Bloom nodded gravely, looking in the quick bloodshot eyes.
Secret eyes, secret searching eyes. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside
him again. Wc are the last. In the same boat. Hope he’ll say some-
thing else.

Mr Kernan added:

— The service of the Irish church, used in .Mount Jerome, is simpler,
more impressive, I must say.

Mr Bloom gave prudent assent. The language of course was another
thing.

Mr Kernan said with solemnity;

— 1 am the resurrection and the Uje. That touches a man’s inmost
heart.

— It docs, Mr Bloom said.

Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by

97 «

two with his toes to the daises? No touching that. Seat of the affec-
tions. Broken heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons
of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up and there you
are. Lots of them lying around here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty
pumps: damn the thing else. The resurrection and the life. Once you
are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them alt up
out of their graves. Come forth, Laaarus! And he came fifth and
lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing around
for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. Find damn all of
himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in a skull. Twelve
grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure.

Corny Kellchcr fell into step at their side.

— Everything went off A t, he said. \Vliat?

He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman’s shoulders.
With your tooraloom tooraloom.

— As it should be, .Mr Kernan said.

— What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.

#

Mr Kernan assured him.

— Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton
asked. I know his face.

Ned Lambert glanced back.

— Bloom, he said. Madam Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the
soprano. She’s his wife.

— O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven’t seen her for
some time. She was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait,
fifteen seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon’s, in Roundtown.
And a good armful she w'as.

He looked behind through the others.

— What is he? he asked. What docs he do? Wasn’t he in the
stationery line? I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at
bowls.

Ned Lambert smiled.

— Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hcly’s. A traveller for blotting-
paper.

— In God’s name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a
coon like that for? She had plenty of game in her then.

—Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.

John Henry Menton’s large eyes stared ahead.

The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed

98

among the grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched
their caps.

— John O’Connell, Mr Power said, pleased. He never forgets a
friend.

Mr O’Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dcdalus said:

— I am come to pay you another visit.

— My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don’t
want your custom at all.

Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at
Martin Cunningham’s side, puzzling two keys at his back.

— Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the
Coombe?

— I did not, Martin Cunningham said.

They bent their silks hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear.
The caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watch chain
and spoke in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.

— They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one
foggy evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked
for Mulcahy from the Coombe and were told where he was buried.
After traipsing about in the fog they found the grave, sure enough.
One of the drunks spelt out the name: Terence Mulcahy. The other
drunk was blinking up at a statue of our Saviour the widow had
got put up.

The caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He
resumed:

-—And, after blinking up at the sacred figure. Not a bloody bit like
the marly says he. That't not Mulcahy y says he, whoever done it

Rewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Corny Kelleher,
accepting the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning
them as he walked.

— That’s all done with a purpose, Martin Cunningham explained to

— I know, Hynes said, I know that.

—To cheer a fellow up, Martin Cunningham said. It’s pure good-
heartedness: damn the thing else.

Mr Bloom admired the caretaker’s prosperous bulk. All want to
be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, John O’Connell, real
good sort. Keys: like Keyes’s ad: no fear of anyone getting out, no
passout checks. Habeat corpus. I must sec about that ad after the

99

funeral. Did I write BalUbridge on the envelope I took to cover when
she disturbed me writing to Martha? Hope it’s not chucked in the
dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard.
That’s the first sign when the hairs come out grey and temper getting
cross. Silver threads among the grey. Fancy being his wife. Wonder
how he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live
in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first.
Courting death. . . Shades of night hovering here with all the dead
stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn
and Daniel O’Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this
used to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same
like a big giant in the dark. Will o’ the wisp. Gas of graves. Want
to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. VVomcn especially are so
touchy. Tell her a gho't story in bed to make her sleep. Have you
ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock
was on the stroke of twelve. Still they’d kiss all right if properly
keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken
young. You might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love
among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of
death we are in life. Both ends meet. Tantalising for the poor dead.
Smell of frilled beefsteaks to the starving gnawing their vitals. Desire
to grig people. Molly wanting to do it at the window. Eight children
he has anyway.

He has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him
field after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing.
Sitting or kneeling you couldn’t. Standing? His head might come up
some day above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All
honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells. And very neat he
keeps it too, trim grass and edgings. His garden I' lajor Gamble calls
Mount Jerome. Well so it is. Ought to be flowers of sleep. Chinese
cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best opium
Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens arc just over there. It’s
the blood sinking in the earth gives new life. Same idea those jews
they said killed the Christian boy. Every man his price. Well preserved
fat corpse gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain.
By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately
deceased, three pounds thirteen and six. With thanks.

I daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpse manure, bones,
flesh, nails, charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink,

too

decomposing. Rot quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher.
Then a kind of a tallowy kind ot a cheesy. Then begin to get black,
treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course
the cells or whatever they arc go on living. Changing about. Live for
ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed on themselves.

But they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply
swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those prettv little
seaside gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of
power seeing all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at
life. Cracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one
about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a. m. this morning.
1 1 p. m. (closing time). Not arrived vet. Peter. The dead themselves
the men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to
know what’s in fashion. A juiev pear or ladies’ punch, hot, strong and
sweet. Keep out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do
it that way. Gravediggers in Hamlet. Show’s the profound knowledge
of the human heart. Daren’t joke about the dead for two years at least.
De moriuis nil nisi prius. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine
his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke. Read your own obituary notice
they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New' lease of life.

— How' many have you for tomorrow.^ the caretaker asked.

— Two, Corny Kcllcher said. Half ten and eleven.

The caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased
to trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole,
stepping with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the
coffin and set its nose on the brink, looping the bands round it.

Burying him. We come to bury C®sar. His ides of March or June.
He doesn’t know who is here nor care.

Now who is that lankvlooking galoot over there in the macintosh?
Now who is he I’d like to know? Now', Td give a trifle to know who
he is. Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could
live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he’d have to get
someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave.
We all do. Only man buries. No ants too. First thing strikes any-
body. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well
then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come
to look at it.

O, poor Robinson Crusoe ^

Hwd could you possibly do so?

loi

PoorDignam! His last Uc on the earth in his box. When you think
of them all it docs seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They
could invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding let it down
that way. Ay but they might object to be buried out of another
fellow’s. They’re so particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of
clay from the holy land. Only a mother and dcadborn child ever
buried in the one coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him
as long as possible even in the earth. The Irishman s house is his
coffin. Enbalming in catacombs, mummies, the same idea.

Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared
heads. Twelve. I’m thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is
thirteen. Death’s number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He
wasn’t in the chapel, that I’ll swear. Silly superstition that about

thirteen.

Nice soft tweed Ned Lambert has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I
had one like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow
he was once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that
grey suit of mine turned by Mesias. Hello. It’s dyed. His wife I
forgot he’s not married or his landlady ought to have picked out those
threads for him.

The coffin dived out of sight, cased down by the men straddled on
the gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered.
Twenty.

Pause.

If we were all suddenly somebody else.

Far away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead
one, they say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went
away*

Gentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper.
The boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring
quietly in the black open space. Mr Bloom moved behind the portly
kindly caretaker. Well cut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps
to sec which will go next. Well it is a long rest. Feel no more. It’s
the moment you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can’t believe it at
first. Mistake must be: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait,
I wanted to. I haven’t yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light
they want. Whispering around you. Would you like to sec a priest?
Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life.
The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower eyelid.

102

Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet
yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he’s
doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner’s death showing him a woman.
Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of Shall I nevermore

behold theef Bam! expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit:
forget you. Don’t forget to pray for him. Remember him in your
prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow:
dropping into a hole one after the other.

We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you’re
well and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life
into the fire of purgatory.

Does he ever think of the hole waiting for himself.^ They say you do
when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy’s
warning. Near you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I
bought. Mamma poor mamma» and little Ruddy.

The gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay
in on the coffin. Mr Bloom turned his face. And if he was alive all
the time.^ Whew! By Jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is
dead, of course. Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought
to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric
clock or a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole.
Flag of distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer.
Just as well to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there’s no.

The clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of
mind.

The caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had
enough of it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering
themselves without show. Mr Bloom put on his hat and saw the portly
figure make its way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure
of his ground, he traversed the dismal fields.

Hynes jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names.
But he knows them all. No: coming to me.

— I am just taking the names, Hynes said below his breath. What
is your Christian name.^ I’m not sure.

— L, Mr Bloom said. Leopold. And you might put down M’Coy’s
name too. He asked me to.

— Charley, Hynes said writing. I know. He was on the "Freeman
once.

So he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne.

103

Good idea a postmortem tor doctors. Find out what they imagine
they know. He died ot a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the
cash of a few ads. Charley, you’re my darling. That was why he
asked me to. O well, does no harm. 1 saw to that, M'Coy. Thanks,
old chap; much obliged. Leave him under an obligation: costs
nothing.

— And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that tellow in the, fellow
was over there in the. . .

He looked around.

— Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?

— MTntosh, Hynes said, scribbling, I don’t know who he is. Is
that his name?

He moved away, looking about him.

— No, Mr Blootn began, turning and stopping. I say, Hynes!

Didn’t hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign.
Well of all the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become
invisible. Good Lord, what became of him?

A seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Bloom to take up an idle
spade.

— O, excuse me!

He stepped aside nimbly.

Clay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly
over. A mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers
rested their spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy
propped his wreath against a corner; the brother-in-law his on a lump.
The gravediggers put on their caps and carried their earthly spades
towards the barrow. Then knocked the blades lightly on the turf:
clean. One bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One,
leaving his mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade
blueglancing. Silently at the gravchead another coiled the coffinband.
His navelcord. The brother-in-law, turning away, placed something
in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir: trouble. Headshake.
I know that. For yourselves just.

The mourners moved away slowly, without aim, by devious paths,
staying awhile to read a name on a tomb.

— Let us go round by the chieTs grave, Hynes said. Wc have time.

— Let us, Mr Power said.

They turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe
Mr Power’s blank voice spoke:

104

—Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled
with stones. That one day he will come again.

Hynes shook his head.

—Parnell will never come again, he said. He’s there, all that wa^
mortal of him. Peace to his ashes.

Mr Bloom walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels,
crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast
eyes, old Ireland s hearts and hands. .More sensible to spend the money
on some charity for the living. Pray tor the repose of the sou] of
Docs anybody really.^ Plant him and have done with him. Like down
a coalshoot. Then lump them together to save time' All souls’ dav
Tw'cntyscventh I’ll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. I fe
keeps It free of weeds. Old man himself. Bent down double with his
shears clipping. Near death’s door. Who passed away. Who departed
this life. As if they did it of their own accord. Got the shove, all of
them. Who kicked the bucket. More interesting if they told you
what they were. So and so, wheelwright. I travelled for cork lino* I
paid five shilling in the pound. Or a woman’s with her saucepan. I
cooked good Irish stew’. Eulogy in a country churchyard it ought to
be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth' or Thomas Campbell
Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr .Murren’s. The great
physician called him home. Well it’s God’s acre for them. Isace
country residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have
a quiet smoke and read the Church Timts. .Marriage ads they ne\ er
try to beautify. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil
Better value that for the money. Still, the flowers arc more poetical

The other gets rather tiresome, never withering. Expresses nothing
Immortelles. ^

A bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like
the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hu! Not a budge out

of him. Knows there arc no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal
even sadder. Silly-Mllly burying the little dead bird in the kitchen
matchbox, a daisychain and bits of broken chainics on the grave.

The Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought
to be sidcw'ays and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland

that. Seems anything but pleased.
Why this infliction.^ Would birds come then and peck like the boy
With the basket of fruit but he said no because they ought to have been
afraid of the boy. Apollo that was.

*05

How manyl All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful
departed. As you arc now so once were we.

Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice.
Well, the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every
grave or keep it in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on
poor old greatgrandfather Kraahraark! Hellohcllohcllo amawfuUyglad
kraark awfullygladaseeragain hellohello amarawf kopthsth. Remind
you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. Other-
wise you couldn’t remember the face after fifteen years, say. For
instance who? For instance some fellow that died when I was in
Wisdom Hely’s.

Rtststrl A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop.

He looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait.
There he goes.

An obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the
pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The
grey alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under
it. Good hidingplace for treasure.

Who lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert
Emmet was buried here by torchlight, wasn’t he? Making his rounds.

Tail gone now.

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the
bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A
corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what’s cheese? Corpse of milk.
I read in that V oyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smeHs
like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling
for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time
of the plague. Quicklime fever pits to eat them. Lethal chamber.
Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. \^cre is that Parsee tower of silence?
Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the
pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But being brought back
to life no. Can’t bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine.
Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down.
Underground communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn’t
be surprised. Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he’s
well dead. Got wind of Dignam. They wouldn’t care about the
smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw
white turnips.

The gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again.

io6

Enough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time
I was here was Mrs Sinico’s funeral. Poor papa too. The love that
kills. And even scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like
that case I read of to get at fresh buried temalcs or even putrefied
with running gravcsorcs. Give you the creeps after a bit. I will appear
to you after death. You will see my ghost after death. .My ghost will
haunt you after death. There is another world after death named hell.
I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to
see and hear and feel yet. Feel live warm beings near you. Let
them sleep in their maggoty beds. They arc not going to get me this
innings. Warm beds: warm fullblooded life.

.Vlartin Cunningham emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.

Solicitor, I think. I know his face. Menton. John Henry, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Dignam used to be in his office.
Mat Dillon’s long ago. Jolly Mat convivial evenings. Cold fowl,
cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Menton. Got
his rag out that evening on the bowling green because I sailed inside
him. Pure fluke of mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike
to me. Hate at first sight. Molly and Flocy Dillon linked under the
lilactree, laughing. Fellow always like that, mortified if women arc by.

Got a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.

— Excuse me, sir, .Mr Bloom said beside them.

They stopped.

— Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Bloom said, pointing.

John Henry Menton stared at him for an instant without moving.

— There, Martin Cunningham helped, pointing also.

John Henry Menton took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and
smoothed the nap with care on his coatslecvc. He clapped the hai
on his head again.

— It’s all right now, Martin Cunningham said.

John Henry Menton jerked his head down in acknowledgment.

— Thank you, he said shortly.

They walked on towards the gates. Mr Bloom, chapfallen, drew
behind a few paces so as not to overhear. Martin laying down the
law. Martin could wind a ^appyhead like that round his little finger
without his seeing it.

Oyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns
on him. Get the pull over him that way.

Thank you. How’ grand we arc this morning.

107

IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN
METROPOLIS

★ Before nelson’s pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed
trolley, started for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea,
Rathgar and Terenurc, Palmerston park and upper Rathmines,
y Green, Rathmines, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower,

Harold s Cross. The hoarse Dublin United Tramw’ay Company’s
timekeeper bawled them off:

— Rathgar and Terenure!

— Come on, Sandymount Green!

Right and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a
singledeck moved from their railheads, swer\'ed to the dow'n line,
glided parallel.

— Start, Palmerston park!

THE WEARER OF THE CROWN

Under the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and
polished. Parked in North Prince’s street His Majesty’s vermilion
mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly
flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid,
for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery.

GENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince’s
stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery
float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen
out of Prince’s stores.

— There it is. Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.

—Just cut it out, will you? Mr Bloom said, and I’ll take it round to
the Telegraph office.

The door of Ruttlcdgc’s office creaked again. Davy Stephens,
minute in a^ large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets,
passed out with a roll of papers under his cape, a king’s courier.

Red Murray $ long shears sliced out the advertisement from the
newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.

—1 11 go through the printing works, Mr Bloom said, taking the
cut square.

io8

— Of course, if he wants a par. Red Murray said earnestly, a pen
behind his car, we can do him one.

— Right, Mr Bloom said with a nod. I’ll rub that in.

We.

WILLIAM BRAYDEN. ESQUIRE. OF
OAKLANDS. SANDYMOUNT

Red Murray touched Mr Bloom’s arm with the shears and
whispered:

— Brayden.

Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap
as a stately figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly
Freeman and National Press and the Freemans Journal and National
Press. Dullthudding Guinness’s barrels. It passed stately up the
staircase steered by an umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The
broadcloth back ascended each step: back. All his brains arc in the
nape of his neck, Simon Dcdalus says. Welts of flesh behind on him.
Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.

— Don’t you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray
whispered.

The door of Ruttledgc’s office whispered: cc: cree. They always
build one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.

Our Saviour; bcardframed oval face: talking in the dusk Mary,
Martha. Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the
tenor.

— Or like Mario, Mr Bloom said.

— Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture
of Our Saviour.

Jesus Mario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on
his heart. In Martha.

Co-ome thou lost one^

Co-ome thou dear one.

THE CROZIER AND THE PEN

— His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said
gravely.

They watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.

A telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the
counter and stepped off posthaste with a word.

109

— Freeman!

Mr Bloom said slowly:

— Well, he is one of our saviours also.

A meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he
passed in through the sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and
passage, along the now reverberating boards. But will he save the
circulation? Thumping, thumping.

He pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn
packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way
towards Nannetti’s reading closet.

WITH UNFEIGNED REGRET IT IS WE
ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF
A MOST RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS

Hynes here too; account of the funeral probably. Thumping
thump. This morning the remains of the late Mr Patrick Dlgnam.
Machines. Smash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the
world today. His machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got
out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that
old grey rat tearing to get in.

HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN
IS TURNED OUT

Mr Bloom halted behind the foreman’s spare body, admiring a glossy
crown.

Strange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country.
Member for College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack
for all it was worth. It’s the ads and side features sell a weekly not the
stale news in the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by
authority in the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the town-
land of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnachinch. To all whom it may
concern schedule pursuant to statute showing return of number of
mules and jennets exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons.
Phil Blake’s weekly Pat and Bull story. Uncle Toby’s page for tiny
tots. Country bumpkin’s queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good
cure for flatulence? I’d like that part. Learn a lot teaching others.
The personal note M. A. P. Mainly all pictures. Shapely bathers on
golden strand. World’s biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters

I lO

celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other.
Cuprani too, printer. More Irish than the Irish.

The machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump.
Now if he got paralysed there and no one knew how to stop them
they’d clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and
back. .Monkeydoodle the whole thing. Want a cool head.

— Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Hynes said.

Soon be calling him my lord mayor. Long John is backing him
they say.

The foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the
sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently
over the dirty glass screen.

— Right: thanks, Hynes said moving off.

Mr Bloom stood in his way.

— If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said,
pointing backward with his thumb.

— Did you.^ Hynes asked.

— Mm, Mr Bloom said. Look sharp and you’ll catch him.

— Thanks, old man, Hynes said. I’ll tap him too.

He hurried on eagerly towards the Freeman's ’Journal.

Three bob I lent him in .Meagher’s. Three w eeks. Third hint.

WE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK

Mr Bloom laid his cutting on Mr. Nannetti’s desk.

— Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you sec. Keyes, you
remember.

Mr Nannctti considered the cutting a while and nodded.

— He wants it in for July, Mr Bloom said.

He doesn’t hear it. Nannan. Iron ncrv'cs.

The foreman moved his pencil towards it.

— But wait, Mr Bloom said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see.
He wants two keys at the top.

Hell of a racket they make. Maybe he understands what I.

The foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow,
began to scratch slowly in the armpit, of his alpaca jacket.

— Like that, Mr Bloom said, crossing his forefingers at the top.

Let him take that in first.

Mr Bloom, glancing sidew'ays up from the cross he had made, saw

1 1 1

the foreman’s sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and
beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it.
C lank it. Miles ot it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, w’rap up
meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one things.

Slipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew
swiftly on the scarred woodwork.

HOUSE OF KEY(E)S

— Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the
name Alexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.

Better not teach him his own business.

—You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round
the top in leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that’s a

good idea?

The foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and
scratched there quietly.

—The idea, Mr Bloom said, is the house of keys. You know,
councillor, the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists,
you know’, from the isle of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you
do that? ^

I could ask him perhaps about how’ to pronounce that voglio. But
then if he didn’t know only make it awkward for him. Better not.

— We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?

I can get it, Mr Bloom said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He
has a house there too. I’ll just run out and ask him. Well, you can
do that and just a little par calling attention. You know the usual.
High class licensed premises. Longfelt w-ant. So on.

The foreman thought for an instant.

We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months’ renewal.

A typesetter brought him a limp gallcypage. He began to check
it silently. Mr Bloom stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks,
watching the silent typesetters at their cases.

ORTHOGRAPHICAL

Want to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Martin Cunningham
forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amus-
ing to view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess
ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry of a peeled

I 12

pear under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn’t it? Cemetery put in of course
on account of the symmetry.

I could have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I
ought to have said something about an old hat or something. No,
I could have said. Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then.

Slit. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forv^ ards its
flyboard with slit the first batch of quirefoldcd papers. Silt. Almost
human the way it slit to call attention. Doing its level best to speak.
That door too silt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in
its own way. Silt.

NOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL

CONTRIBUTOR

The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:

— Wait. Where’s the archbishop’s letter.^ It’s to be repealed in the
Telegraph. Where’s what s his name?

He looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.

— Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.

— Ay. Where’s Monks?

— Monksl

Mr Bloom look up his cutting. Time to get out.

— Then I’ll get the design, Mr Nannetti, he said, and you’ll give
it a good place I know.

— Monks!

— Yes, sir.

Three months’ renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest
first. Try it anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month.
Ballsbridge. Tourists over for the show.

A DAYFATHER

He walked on through the caseroom, passing an old man, bowed,
spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfathcr. Queer lot of stuff he
must have put through his hands in his time; obituary notices, pubs’
ads, speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his
tether now. Sober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I’d say.
Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the machine in the
parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense.

1

AND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE

PASSOVER

I k- 5.taycd in liis walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type.
Reads it backwards first. Quickly he docs it. Must require some
practice that. mangiD. keirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book,
reading backwards with his finger to me. Pessach, Next year in
Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about that brought
us out of the land of Hgypt and into the house of bondage alleluia.
Shema Israel Adonai Elohenu. No, that’s the other. Then the twelve
brothers, Jacob’s sons, .^nd then the lamb and the cat and the dog and
the stick and the water and the butcher and then the angel of death
kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds
a bit silly till vou come to look into it well, justice it means but it’s
everybody eating everyone else. That’s what life is after all. How
quickly he docs that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with
his fingers.

Mr Bloom passed on out of the clanking noises through the
gallery on to the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the
way and then catch him out perhaps? Better phone him up first.
Number? Same as Citron’s house. Twentyeight. Twentycight
double four.

ONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP

He went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over
these walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy
greasy smell there always is in those works. Lukew-arm glue in Thom’s
next door when I was there.

He took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the
soap I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handker-
chief he took out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned into the hip
pocket of his trousers.

What perfume does your w’ifc use? I could go home still:
tram: something I forgot. Just to see before dressing. No. Here.
No.

A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph
office. Know who that is. What’s up? Pop in a minute to phone.
Ned Lambert it is.

He entered softly.

114

ERIN. GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA

— The ghost walks, professor MacHugh murmured softly, biscuit-
fully to the dusty windowpane.

Mr Dedalus, staring from the empty fireplace at Ned Lambert’s
quizzing face, asked of it sourly:

— Agonising Christ, wouldn’t it give you a heartburn on your arse?

Ned Lambert, seated on the table, read on;

— Or again, note the meandering! oj some purling rill as it babbles on its
wayyjanned by gentlest zephyrs tho (quarrelling -xith the stony obstacles,
to the tumbling -waters oJ Neptune's blue domain, mid mossy banks, played
on by the glorious sunlight or 'neath the shadows cast o'er its pensive
bosom by the overarching leafage oj the giants oJ the forest. What about
that, Simon? he asked over the fringe ot his newspaper. How’s that
for high?

— Changing his drink, Mr Dedalus said.

Ned Lambert, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees,
repeating:

— The pensive bosom and the overarsing leafage. O boys! O boys!

— And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr. Dedalus said,
looking again on the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon
looked on the sea.

— That will do, professor MacHugh cried from the window. I
don’t want to hear any more of the stuff.

He ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and,
hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.

High f^utin stuff. Bladderbags. Ned Lambert is taking a day off
I sec. Rather upsets a man’s day a funeral docs. He has influence
they say. Old Chatlcrton, the vice-chancellor, is his granduncle or
his grcatgrandunclc. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his
death written this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might
go first himself. Johnny, make room for your uncle. The right
honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an
odd shaky cheque or two on gale days. Windfall when he kicks out.
Alleluia.

— Just another spasm, Ned Lambert said.

— What is it? Mr Bloom asked.

— A recently discovered fragment of Cicero’s, professor MacHugh
answered with pomp of tone. Our lovely land.

SHORT BUT TO THE POINT
— Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply.

— Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews.
With an accent on the whose.

— Dan Dawson’s land, Mr Dedalus said.

— Is it his speech last night? Mr Bloom asked.

Ned Lambert nodded.

— But listen to this, he said.

The doorknob hit Mr Bloom in the small of the back as the door
was pushed in.

— Excuse me, J. J. O’Molloy said, entering.

Mr Bloom moved nimbly aside.

— I beg yours, he said.

— Good day. Jack.

— Come in. Come in.

— Good day.

— How arc you, Dedalus?

— Well. And yourself?

J. J. O’Molloy shook his head.

SAD

Cleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline poor chap.
That hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him.
What’s in the wind, I wonder. Money worry.

— Or again ij we but climb the serried mountain peaks.

— You’re looking extra.

—Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O’Molloy asked, looking towards the
inner door.

—Very much so, professor MacHugh said. To be seen and heard.
He’s in his sanctum with Lenehan.

J. J. O MoIIoy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back
the pink pages of the file.

Practice dwindling. A mighthavcbccn. Losing heart. Gambling.
Debts of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers
from D. and T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show their grey matter.
Brains on their sleeve like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does
some literary work for the Express with Gabriel Conroy. Wcllread
fellow. Myles Crawford began on the Independent. Funny the way

1 16

those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening.
Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn’t kno\^
which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one
another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hailfcllow
well met the next moment.

— Ah, listen to this for God’s sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again
ij we hut climb the serried mountain peaks . . .

— Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated
windbag!

— Peaks, Ned Lambert w-ent on, towering high on high, to bathe our
souls, as it were . . .

— Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes?
Is he taking anything for it?

— As 'twere, in the peerless panorama oj Ireland's portjoUo, unmatched,
despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions, Jor
very beauty, oj bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland
oj vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow oj our mild
mysterious Irish twilight . . .

HIS NATIVE DORIC

— The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.

— That mantles the vista jar and wide and wait till the glowing orb oj
the moon shines jorth to irradiate her silver e^ulgence.

— 0! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan, shite
and onions! That’ll do, Ned. Life is loo short.

He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy
moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.

Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight.
An instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor
MacHugh’s unshaven blackspectaclcd face.

— Doughy Daw! he cried.

WHAT WETHERUP SAID

All very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like
hot cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too wasn’t he? Why
they call him Doughy Daw'. Feathered his nest well anyhow.
Daughter engaged to that chap in the inland revenue office with
the motor. Hooked that nicely. Entertainments open house. Big

117

blow out. Wetherup always said that. Get a grip of them by the
stomach.

The inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face,
crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes
stared about them and the harsh voice asked:

— What is it?

— And here comes the sham squire himself, professor MacHugh
said grandly.

— Getououthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said -in
recognition.

—Come, Ned, Mr Dedalus said, putting on his hat. I must get a
drink after that.

— Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.

— Quite right too, Mr Dedalus said, going out. Come on, Ned.

Ned Lambert sidled down from the table. The editor’s blue eyes
roved tow-ards Mr Bloom’s face, shadowed by a smile.

—Will you join us, Myles? Ned Lambert asked.

MEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED

— North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece.
We won every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!

— Where was that, Myles? Ned Lambert asked with a reflective
glance at his toecaps.

— In Ohio! the editor shouted.

— So it was, begad, Ned Lambert agreed.

Passing out, he whispered to J. J. O’Molloy:

— Incipient jigs. Sad case.

— Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet
face. My Ohio!

— A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.

O. HARP EOLIAN

He took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking
off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant
unwashed teeth.

— Bingbang, bangbang.

Mr Bloom, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.

ii8

—Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone
about an ad.

He went in.

— VVhat about that leader this evening? professor .MacHugh asked,
coming to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.

— That’ll be all right, .Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you
fret. Hello, Jack. That’s all right.

—Good day, Myles, J. J. O'lMolloy said, letting the pages he held
slip limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?

The telephone whirred inside.

— Twenty eight . . . No, twenty . . . Double tour ... \cs.

SPOT THE WINNER

Lenehan came out of the inner office with Sports tissues.

— Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with
O. Madden up.

He tossed the tissues on to the table.

Screams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door
was Hung open.

— Hush, Lenehan said. I hear feetstoops.

Professor MacHugh strode across the room and seized the cringing
urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down
the steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in. the
air blue scrawls and under the table came to earth.

— It wasn’t me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.

—Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There’s a
hurricane blowing.

Lenehan began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he
stooped twice.

— Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat
Farrell shoved me, sir.

He pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.

— Him, sir.

— Out of this with you, professor MacHugh said gruffly.

He hustled the boy out and banged the door to.

J. J. O’MoIIoy turned the files crackingly over, murmuring,
seeking:

— Continued on page six, column four.

119

— Yes . . . Evening Telegraph here, Mr Bloom phoned from the
inner office. Is the boss . . . ? Yes, Telegraph . . . To where.^ . . .
Aha! Which auction rooms? . . . Aha! I see . . . Right. I’ll
catch him.

A COLLISION ENSUES

The bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly at^d
bumped against Lenchan who was struggling up with the second tissue.

— Pardon, monsieur, Lenehan said, clutching him for an instant
and making a grin^acc.

— My fault, Mr Bloom said, suffering his grip. Arc you hurt? Tm
in a hurry.

— Knee, Lenehan said.

He made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee.

— The accumulation of the anno Domini.

— Sorry, Mr Bloom said.

He went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O’Molloy
slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouth-
organ, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the
doorsteps:

We are the hoys oj Wexjord
Who fought with heart and hand.

EXIT BLOOM

— Tm just running round to Bachelor’s walk, Mr Bloom said, about
this ad of Keyes’s. Want to fix it up. They tell me he’s round there
in Dillon’s.

He looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who,
leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand
suddenly stretched forth an arm amply.

— Begone! he said. The world is before you.

— Back in no time, Mr Bloom said, hurrying out.

J. J. O’Molloy took the tissues from Lenehan’s hand and read them,
blowing them apart gently, without comment.

— He’ll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through
his blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young
scamps after him.

— Show! Where? Lenehan cried, running to the window.

120

A STREET CORTEGE

Both smiled over the crossblind at the file ot capering newsboys in
Mr Bloom’s wake, the last 2igzagging white on the breeze a mocking
kite, a tail of w hite bowknots.

— Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Lenehan
said, and you’ll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and
the walk. Small nines. Steal upon larks.

He began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding
feet past the fireplace to J. J. O’.Molloy who placed the tissues in his
receiving hands.

—What’s that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where arc the
other tw'o gone?

— VV^ho? the professor said, turning. They re gone round to the
Oval for a drink. Paddy Hooper is there w ith Jack Hall. Came over
last night.

— Come on then, Myles Crawford said. U here s my hat?

He walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent ot his
jacket, jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the
air and against the w'ood as he locked his desk drawer.

— He’s pretty well on, professor MacHugh said in a low voice.

—Seems to be, J. J. O’Molloy said, taking out a cigarette case in
murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the
most matches?

THE CALUMET OF PEACE

He offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself.
Lenehan promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes
in turn. J. J. O’Molloy opened his case again and offered it.

-^Thanky vout, Lenehan said, helping himself.

The editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow.
He declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacHugh.

*Tweis rani and jnyne that ttfnptfd thee,

*Twas <mpire charmed thy heart.

The professor grinned, locking his long lips.

—Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.

He took a cigarette from the open case. Lenehan, lighting it for
him with quick grace, said:

121

MktK'c for tnv brandncw* riddle!

— Impcrium rornanum^ J. J. U’Molloy said gently. It sounds nobler
that! Britisli or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in
the fire.

Myles Crawford bleu hi'- fir t puff violently towards the ceiling.

— That’s it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire.
W e haven’t got the chance of a snowball in hell.

THE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME

— Wait a moment, professor MacHugh said, raising two quiet
«,laws. We mustn’t be led away by words, by sounds of w’ords. We
think of Rome, imperial, imperious, imperative.

He extended elocutionary artns from frayed stained shirtcufFs,
pausing:

— V\hat was their civilisation? \'^ast, I allow-; but vile. Cloacs:
sew'crs. The Jews In the w ilderness and on the mountaintop said; It is
meet to be here. Let us build an altar to ’Jehovah. The Roman, like
the Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new
shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his
cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: It is
meet to be here. Let us construct a watercloset^

— W'hich they accordingly did do, Lenchan said. Our old ancient
ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guinness’s, were partial
to the running stream.

— They were nature’s gentlemen, J. J. O’Molloy murmured. But
we have also Roman law.

— And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacHugh responded.

— Do you know that story about chief Baron Palles? J. J. O’Molloy
asked. It was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going
swimmingly . . .

— First my riddle, Lenehan said. Arc you ready?

Mr O’Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came
in from the hallway. Stephen Dedalus, behind him, uncovered as he
entered.

— Entrez, mes enjants! Lenehan cried.

— 1 escort a suppliant, Mr O’Madden Burke said melodiously.
Youth led by Experience visits Notoriety.

122

t

— How do you do? the editor ‘■aid, holding out a hand. Conic in.
Your governor is just gone.

}

♦

9

Lcnehan said to all:

— Silence! What opera resembles a railway line? Reflect, ponder,
excogitate, reply.

Stephen handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and
signature.

— Who? the editor asked.

Bit torn off.

— Mr Garrett Dcasy, Stephen said.

— That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short
taken.

0/7 rwift sail flaming
From storm and south
He comes t pale vampire^

Mouth to my mouth.

— Good day, Stephen, the professor said, coming to peer over their
shoulders. Foot and mouth? Arc you turned . . ?

Bullockbefriending bard.

SHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT

— Good day, sir, Stephen answered, blushing. The letter is not
mine. Mr Garrett Deasy asked me to . . .

— O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and knew his wife too.
The bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot
and mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in
the waiter's face in the Star and Garter. Ohol

A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife
of Menclaus, ten years the Greeks. O’Rourke, prince of BrcfFni.

— Is he a widower? Stephen asked.

— Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the
typescript. Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life
on the ramparts of Vienna. Don't you forget! Maximilian Karl
O’Donnell, graf von Tirconnel in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make

123

•' . k.iiy .in Aii'tn.tn hcldni.ir>h.il iu)w. Gnmg to he trouble tlierc one
-i.iv. W ild gcc>e. vej-, cverv tinic. Don't you torget that!

— rhe moot point is did Ik* t'orget itr j. ]. O'Mollov said quietly,
turning a lior-e^hoc paperweight. Savin" prince- i- a thank you job.

Prote-sor M.icHugh turned on him.

— .And if not? he baid.

— I’ll tell you how it was, Mvle- C'r.iwtord began. A Hungarian
it \\ as one da\ . . .

LOST CAUSES

NOBLE MARQUESS MENTIONED

— W’c were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for
us is the death of the intellect and of tlie imagination. We were never
loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin
language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality
is the maxim: time is money. .Material domination. Dominus! Lord!
W here is the spirituality? Lord Jesus! Lord Salisbury. A sofa in a
westend club. Hut the Greek!

KYRIE ELEISON!

A smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his
long lips.

— rhe Greek! he said again. Kyrios! Shining word! The vowels
the Semite and the Saxon know not. Kyrie! The radiance of the
intellect. 1 ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. Kyrie
eleison! The closetmakcr and the cloacamaker will never be lords of.
our spirit. We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe
that foundered at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an
imperium, that went under with the Athenian fleets at ./Egospotami.
Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a
last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece. Loyal to a lost cause.

He strode away from them towards the window.

— They went forth to battle, Mr O’Madden Burke said greyly, but
they always fell.

— Boohoo! Lenehan wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick
received in the latter half of the matinie. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!

He whispered then near Stephen’s car:

124

LENEHAN’S LIMERICK

There's a ponderous pundit MacHugh
If ho n ears goggles oj ebony hue.

As he mostly sees double

To n ear them ichy trouble d

1 can't see the yoe Miller. Can you'(

In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.

Myles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidcpocket.

— That'll be all right, he said. I’ll read the rest after. That’ll be all
right.

Lcnehan extended his hands in protest.

— But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railway line?

— Opera? Mr O’Madden Burke’s sphinx face rcriddled.

Lenchan announced gladly.’

— The Rose oJ Castille. Sec the whec-zc? Rows of cast steel. Gee!

He poked Mr O’Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr
O’Madden Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.

— Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.

Lenchan, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling
tissues.

The professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across
Stephen’s and Mr O’Madden Burke’s loose tics.

— Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.

— Like fellows who had blown up the bastille, J. J. O’Molloy said
in quiet mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland
between you? You look as though you had done the deed. General
Bobrikoff.

OMNIUM GATHERUM

— We were only thinking about it, Stephen said.

— All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics . . .

— The turf, Lenchan put in.

— Literature, the press.

— If Bloom were here, the professor said. The gentle art of

advertisement.

— And Madam Bloom, Mr O’Madden Burke added. The vocal
niuse. Dublin’s prime favourite.

125

Lc'tichan ga\-e a loud cough.

— Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fre^-h of breath air! I caught
a cold in the park. The gate was open.

YOU CAN DO IT!

The editor laid a nervous hand on Stephen’s shoulder.

— I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a
bite in it. You can do it. I sec it in your face. In the lexicon oj
youth ...

Sec it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.
Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective.
Great nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. .All balls! Bulldosing
the public! Give them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it,
damn its soul. Father Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M‘Carthy.
—We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O’Madden Burke said.
Stephen raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.

—He w-ants you for the pressgang, J. j. O’Molloy said.

THE GREAT GALLAHER

— You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in
emphasis. Wait a minute. We’ll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher
used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking
in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a
pen. You know how he made his mark? I’ll tell you. That was the
smartest piece of journalism ever known. That was in eightyone, sixth
of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before
you were born, I suppose. I'll show you.

He pushed past them to the files.

—Look at here, he said, turning. The New York World cabled
for a special. Remember that tirne.^

Professor MacHugh nodded.

New York W orldy the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw
hat. Where it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean, Joe
Brady and the rest of them. Where Skin-the-goat drove the car.
Whole route, see?

—Skin-the-goat, Mr O’Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has
that cabman’s shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan
told me. You know Holohan?

126

— Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.

— And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding
stones for the corporation. A night watchman.

Stephen turned in surprise.

— Gumley? he said. You don’t say so? friend of my father’s, is he?

— Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley
mind the stones, sec they don’t run away. Look at here. What did
Ignatius Gallahcr do? I’ll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled
right aw’ay. Have you Weekly Freeman of 17 .March? Right. Have
you got that?

He flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.

— Take page four, advertisement for Bransome’s coffee let us say.
Have you got that? Right.

The telephone whirred.

A DISTANT VOICE

— I’ll answer it, the professor said going.

— B is parkgate. Good.

His finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.

— T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is
Knockmaroon gate.

The loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock’s wattles. An illstarchcd
dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his
waistcoat.

— Hello? Evening Telegraph here . . . Hello? . . . Who’s
there? . . . Yes . . . Yes . . . Yes. . .

— F to P is the route Skin-the-goat drove tbc car for an alibi.
Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh.
F. A. B. P. Got that? X is Davy’s publichouse in upper Lecson street.

The professor came to the inner door.

— Bloom is at the telephone, he said.

— Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Burke’s
publichouse, see?

CLEVER. VERY

%

— Clever, Leneham said. Very.

— Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole
bloody history.

127

N ciilitin.irc from v\)iicli voii will iU'\tT .luakf.

— 1 -aw ir, the editor said proudly. I wab prcbcnt, Dick Adams, the
I'i btlicarted bloody C'orktnan the Lord c\er put the breath of life iti,
•iiul msselt.

Lenehan bowed to a shape of air, announcing:

— Madam, I’m Adam. .And .Able was I ere I saw Elba.

— History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince’s
street was there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over
that. Ovit of an advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it.
That gave him the leg up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay
who took him on to the Star. Now he’s got in with Blumcnfeld.
7 hat’s press. That’s talent. Pyatt! He was all their daddies.

— The father of scare journalism, Lenehan confirmed, and the
brothcr-in-law' of Chris Callinan.

— Hello? . . . .Are you there? . . . Yes, he’s here still. Come
across yourself.

— Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh.^ the editor cried.

He Hung the pages down.

— Clamn dever, Lenehan said to Mr O’Madden Burke.

— Very smart, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

Professor MacHugh came from the inner office.

— Talking about the invinciblcs, he said, did you see that some
hawkers were up before the recorder . . .

— O yes, J. J. O’Molloy said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking
home through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by
that cyclone last year and thought she’d buy a view of Dublin. And
it turned out to be a commemoration postcard of Joe Brady or
Number One or Skin-thc-goat. Right outside the viceregal lodge,
imagine!

—They’re only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford
said. Psha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the
bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silver-
tongued O’Hagan? Eh? Ah, bloody nonsenscl Only in the half-
penny place!

His mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of
disdain.

Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know?
Why did you write it then?

128

RHYMES AND REASONS

Mouth, iouth. Is the mouth south someway. ■ Or the south a

#

tnotith? Must be some. Soutli, pout, out, shout, drouth. Ilhvmcs:
two men dressed the satne. looking the same, two bv tv'o.

til lua piicf

ihe pjrlur ti place

merjireche tl nemo, come fa, si lace.

He saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, it^
russet, entwining, per I'aer perso in mauve, in purple, quetla pacijica
oriajiamma, in gold of orirtamme, di rtmirar ji plU ardetiii. But I old
men, penitent, Icadenfootcd, underdarkneath the night: mouth south:
tomb womb.

— Speak up for yourselt, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

SUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY . . .

J. J. (J’Molloy, smiling palely, took up the gage.

— My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a
false construction on njy words. I hold no brief, as at present advised,
for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs arc rutming
away with you. Why not bring in Henry Grattan and Flood and
Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius C.illaher wc all know
and his Chapciizod boss, Harmsworth of ilie farthing press, and his
American cousin of the Bowery gutter sheet not to mention Paddy
Kelly's Budgety Pue's Occurrences and our watchful friend The
Skibbereen Eagle. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence like
Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof.

LINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE

— Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in
his face. Irish volunteers. Where arc you now? Established 1763.
Dr Lucas. W'ho have you now like John Philpot Curran? Psha!

— Well, J. J. O’Molloy said, Bushc K. C., for example.

— Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes. Bushc, yes. He has a strain
of it in his blood. Kendal Bushc or I mean Seymour Bushe.

— He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said,
only for . . . But no matter.

J. J. O’Molloy turned to Stephen and said quietly and slowly;

129 K

— > >Mc Of the iiio'-t poh-heJ periods I think I ever listened to in my
life fell from the lip^ of Seymour Bushe. It w as in that case of fratricide,
the Childs murder ease. Buslic defended him.

.■//u/ in the porches of mine car did pour.

By the way how did lie find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the
other story, beast with two backs?

— \Miat was that? the professor asked.

ITALIA. MAGISTRA ARTIUM

— He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O’Molloy said, of Roman
justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the lex talionis.
And he cited the Moses of .Michelangelo in the Vatican.

—Ha.

— .A few wellchosen words, Lenchan prefaced. Silence!

Pause. J. J. O'Molloy took out liis cigarette case.

False lull. Something quite ordinary.

Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.

I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time
that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match,
that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.

A POLISHED PERIOD

J. J. O’Molloy resumed, moulding his words;

— He said of it: that stony effigy in frozen musky horned and terrihUy
of the human form divine, that eternal symbol of -wisdom and prophecy
which if aught that the imagination or the hand of sculptor has wrought in
marble of soultransjigured and of soultransjiguring deserves to live,
deserves to live.

His slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.

— Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.

— The divine afflatus, Mr O’Madden Burke said.

— You like it? J. J. O’Molloy asked Stephen.

Stephen, his blood w’ooed by grace of language and gesture,
blushed. He took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O’Molloy offered his
case to Myles Crawford. Lenehan lit their cigarettes as before and
took his trophy, saying;

— Muchibus thankibus.

130

A MAN OF HIGH MOR/.LE

— Professor MagennU u as s-pcakiiig to me about vou.J.J. O’.Molloy
said to Stephen. \Vhat do vou think really of that hermetic crowd, tlie
opal hush poets: A. E. the master mystic? That Blavatsky woman
started it. She was a nice old bag ot tricks. A. E. has been telling
some yankee inter\'iewer tliat you came to him in the small hours of
the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness. .Magenni^
thinks you must have been pulling A. E.’s leg. He is a man of the
very highest morale, Magennis.

Speaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did
he say about me? Don’t ask.

— No, thanks, professor MacHugh said, waving the cigarette case
aside. W'^ait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of
oratory I ever heard was a speech made by John F. Taylor at the college
historical society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of
appeal, had spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for
those days), advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.

He turned towards Myles Crawford and said:

— You know' Gerald fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the stvlc
of his discourse.

— He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O’MoHoy said, rumour has it,
on the Trinity college estates commission.

— He is sitting with a sweet thing in a child’s frock, Myles Crawford
said. Go on. Well?

— It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished
orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction,
I will not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man’s
contumely upon the new movement. It was then a new movement.
We were weak, therefore worthless.

He closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an
outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and
ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new
focus.

IMPROMPTU

In ferial tone he addressed J. J. O’Molloy:

— Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sick bed. That
he had prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one
shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy

* 3 *

round it. lie wore a loose neckcloth and altogether he looked
^though he was not) a dying man.

1 li^ gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O’Molloy’s towards
Mephen’s face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His
unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his
withering Iniir. Still seeking, lie said:

— \Mien Kitzgibbon’s speech had ended John F. Taylor rose to
reply. Briefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were
these.

fie raised his head firmly. His eves bethought themselves once more.
\\’iilcss shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.

He began:

— Air Chairman, ladies and gentlemen: Great 'ivas my admiration in
listening to the remarks addressed to the youth oj Ireland a moment since
by my learned friend. It seemed to me that I had been transported into a
country jar aitay from this country, into an age remote from this age,
that 1 stood in ancient ^gypt and that I -was listening to the speech of
some highpricst of that land addressed to the youthful Moses.

His listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smoke
ascctiding in frail stalks that dowered with his speech. And let our
crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your
hand at it yourself?

— And it seemed to me that I heard the voice of that Egyptian high-
priest raised in a tone of like haughtiness and like pride.- 1 heard his
u ords and their meaning was revealed to me.

FROM THE FATHERS

It was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are
corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they
were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse youl That’s saint Augustine.

— IV hy will you jews not accept our culture, our religion and our
language? Tou are a tribe oj nomad herdsmen; we are a mighty people,
y oil have no cities nor no wealth: our cities are hives of humanity and our
galleys, trireme and quadrireme, laden with all manner merchandise
furrow the waters of the known globe. You have but emerged from primitive
conditions: we have a literature, a priesthood, an agelong history and a
polity.

Nile.

132

Cliild, man, cfHffv.

4

Bv tlic Nilcbatik tlic babcmarit- kiucl, cradle of hulru>hc>; a man
supple in combat: stonchorned, ^toncbcarded, heart ot stone.

— You pray to a local atul ‘■bscurc uhi: our temples, majestic and
mysterious, are the abodes of Isis and Osiris, of Horns and .immaj
Ra. Tours serfdom, a-ae and humbleness: curs thunder and the seas.
Israel is u eak and Jew are her children: F^gypt is an host and terrible
are her arms. I'agrants and daylabourers are you called: the world
trembles at our name.

A dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice abo\ e
it boldly:

— But, ladies and gentlemen, had the youthjul Moses listened to and
accepted that view of lije, had he bowed his head and bowed his will and
bowed his spirit before that arrogant admonition he would never have
brought the chosen people out oj their house oj bondage nor Jollowed the
pillar oj the cloud by day. He would never have spoken with the Eternal
amid lightnings on Sinai’s mountaintop nor ever have come down with
the light oJ inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms
the tables oj the law, graven in the language oj the outlaw.

He ceased and looked at them, enjoying silence.

OMINOUS— FOR HIM!

J. J. O’Molloy said not without regret:

— And yet he died without having entered the land of pronuse.

— A sudden - at - the - mon^ent - though - from - lingering -
illness - often - previously - expectorated - demise, Lcnehan said.
And with a great future behind him.

The troop of bare feel was heard rushing along the hallway and
pattering up the staircase.

— That is oratory, the professor said, uncontradicted.

Gone with the wind. Hosts at .Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings.
.Miles of cars of porches. The tribune's words howled and scattered
to the four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise.
Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud
him: me no more.

I have money.

— Gentlemen, Stephen said. As the next motion on the agenda
paper may I suggest that the house do now adjourn.^

*33

— You take iny breath away. It is not perchance a French compli-
nunt: Mr C) .\laddcn Burke asked. ' Fis the hour, methinks, when the
winejug, mctapliorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient
hostelry.

— 'I hat It be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All who are in
favour say ay, Lcnehan announced. The contrary no. I declare it
carried. To which particular boosing shed? . . . My casting vote is;
.Mooney’s!

He led the way, admonishing:

— W'e will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not?
Yes, we will not. By no manner of means.

Mr O’Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally’s lunge of
his umbrella:

— Lay on, Macduff!

— Chip of the old block! the editor cried, slapping Stephen on the
shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?

He fumbled in his pocket, pulling out the crushed typesheets.

—Foot and mouth. 1 know. That’ll be all right. That’ll go in.
Where are they? That’s all right.

He thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.

LET US HOPE

J. J. O’MolIoy, about to follow him in, said quietly to Stephen;

—I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.

He went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.

—Come along, Stephen, the professor said. That is fine, isn’t it?
It has the prophetic vision. Fuit Ilium! The sack of windy Troy.
Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are
fellaheen today.

The first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and
rushed out into the street, yelling;

— Racing speciall

Dublin. I have much, much to learn.

They turned to the left along Abbey street.

— I have a vision too, Stephen said.

Yes, the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will
follow.

Another newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran;

— Racing special!

*34

DEAR DIRTY DUBLIN

Dubliners.

— Two Dublin vestals, Stephen said, elderly and pious, have lived
fifty and fiftythrcc years in Fumbally's lane.

— Where is tliat? the professor asked.

— Ofi Blackpitts.

Damp night recking ot hungry dough. .Against the wall. Face
glistening tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. .Akasic
records. Quicker, darlint!

On now. Dare it. Let there be life.

— They want to sec the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson’s
pillar. They save up three and tcnpcncc in a red tin letterbox money-
box. They shake out the threepenny bits and a sixpence and coax out
the pennies with the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one
and seven in coppers. They put on their bonnets and best clothes and
take their umbrellas for fear it niav come on to rain.

— Wise virgins, professor .MacHugh said.

LIFE ON THE RAW

— 1 hey buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of
panloaf at the north city dining rooms in Marlborough street from
.Miss Kate Collins, proprietress . . . They purchase four and twenty
ripe plums from a girl at the foot of Nelson’s pillar to take off the thirst
of the brawn. They give two threepenny bits to the gentleman at the
turnstile and begin to waddle slowly up the winding staircase, grunting,
encouraging each other, afraid of the dark, panting, one asking the
other have you the brawn, praising God and the Blessed Virgin,
threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory be to God.
They had no idea it was that high.

Their names arc Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabc. Anne
Kearns has the lumbago for w hich she rubs on Lourdes water given
her by a lady who got a bottlcful from a passionist father. Florence
MacCabc takes a crubcen and a bottle of double X for supper every
Saturday.

— Antithesis, the professor said, nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I
can see them. What’s keeping our friend?

He turned.

A bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scampering

135

■1 .. ...r, . \v-llinL’. tliiir ''liite p.ipcis H.iUcrmg. U.tr.i .Utir

Ik III C, r.u't'ird .ippt'.ircd < >ii tlic 'tcp', 1 'k h;U luircoling hi'

.irlct f.u c. t,i iking w irli j. J. U’Mollo\ .

- ( I'liK- .ilong, tlu pr(»ti"or i.ricd, waving hi' arm.

1 1<- t ' .(gain to \\ alk l)^■ StcpIunV sido.

RETURN OF BLOOM

— <s, ]ic said. I 'cc tlicm.

Mr Bloom, lircathlcs', caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the
oflices of the his/i Citlh'jlit and Dublin Pi-nnv ''f'junuil, called:

— Mr Crawford! A motnent!

— Tclcgrtiphl Racing special!

— What is it? .Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.

A newsboy cried in Mr Bloom’s face;

4

— feTrihlo tragedy in Rathmines! A child bif by a bellows!

9

INTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR

— ^jusi this ad, Mr Bloom said, pushing through tow'ards the steps,
puffing, and taking the cutting from bis pocket. I spoke with Mr
Keyes just now. He’ll give a renewal for two months, he says. After
he’ll see. But he wants a par to call attention in the Telegraph too,
the Saturday pink. And he wants it if it’s not too late I told councillor
Nannetti from the Kilkenny People. I can have access to it in the
national library. House of keys, don’t you scc.> His name is Keyes.
It’s a play on the name. But he practically promised he’d give the
renewal. But he w'ants just a little puff. What will I tell him, Mr
Crawford.^

K. M. A.

— W’ill you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said, throw-
ing out his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.

A bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off' for a drink. Arm in
arm. Lenehan’s yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney.
Wonder is that young Dedalus the moving spirit. Has a good pair of
boots on him today- Last time I saw' him he had his heels on view.
Been walking in muck somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing
in Irishtown?

— Well, Mr Bloom said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design

136

I suppose it’s worth a short par. He’d give the ad I think. I’ll tell
him . . .

K. M. R. I. A.

— He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over
his shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.

While Mr Bloom stood weighing the point and about to smile he
strode on jerkily.

RAISING THE WIND

— Nulla Jack, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I’m up to

here. I’ve been througli the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow
to back a bill for me no later than last week. You must take the will
for the deed. Sorry, Jack. With a heart and a half if I could raise the
wind anyhow.

J. J. O’Molloy pulled a long face and walked on silently. Thev
caught up on the others and walked abreast.

— When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their
twenty fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in, they go nearer
to the railings.

— Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford.
Two old Dublin women on the top of Nelson’s pillar.

SOME COLUMN!— THAT'S
WHAT WADDLER ONE SAID

— That’s new, Myles Crawford said. That’s copy. Out for tlie
waxics’ Dargle. Two old trickics, what.^

— But they arc afraid the pillar will fall, Stephen went on. They see
the roofs and argue about where the different churches are; Rathmines’
blue dome, Adam and Eve’s, saint Laurence O’Toole’s. But it makes
them giddy to look so they pull up their skirts . . .

THOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS

FEMALES

— Easy all, Myles Crawford said, no poetic licence. We’re in the
archdiocese here.

— And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the
statue of the onehandled adulterer.

«37

— Onehandlcd adulterer! the professor cried, I like that. I see the
idea. I see what you mean.

DAMES DONATE DUBLIN'S CITS
SPEEDPILLS VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS,

BELIEF

— It gives them a crick in their necks, Stephen said, and they are
too tired to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums
between them and eat the plums out of it one after another, wiping
olF with their handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their
mouths and spitting the plumstones slowly out between the railings.

He gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Lenehan and Mr
O’Madden Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across
towards Mooney’s.

— Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.

SOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN
SQUARE ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH
MOLARS. ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP.

— You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of
Gorgias, the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were
bitterer against others or against himself. He was the son of a noble
and a bondvs'oman. And he wrote a book in which he took away the
palm of beauty from Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope.

Poor Penelope. Penelope Rich.

They made ready to cross O’Connell street.

HELLO THERE. CENTRAL!

At various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless
trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rath-
farnham, Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkcy, Sandymount Green,
Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park
and Upper Rathmines, all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney
cars, cabs, delivery waggons, mail-vans, private broughams, aerated
miner'll water floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled,
horsed' dwn, rapidly.

WHAT?— AND LIKEWISE —WHERE?

— But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they
get the plums?

VIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE. SOPHOMORE
PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES

— Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to
reflect. Call it, let me see. CzW'w. deus nohis hac otiajecit.

— No, Stephen said, I call it A Plsgah Sight oj Palestine or the
Parable oJ the Plums.

— I sec, the professor said.

He laughed richly.

— I see, he said again with new pleasure. .Moses and the promised
land. We gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O’.Molloy.

HORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY

J. J. O’Molloy sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and
held his peace.

— I sec, the professor said.

He halted on sir John Gray’s pavement island and peered aloft at
Nelson through the meshes of his wTy smile.

DIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING
FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES. FLO
WANGLES— YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?

— Onehandlcd adulterer, he said grimly. That tickles me I must say.

— Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God
Almighty’s truth was known.

★ Pineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarstickv
girl shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a Christian brother. Some
school treat. Bad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufac-
turer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his
throne, sucking red jujubes white.

A sombre Y. M. C. A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet

*39

ruincj. ot Graham Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr
Bloom.

Heart to licart talks.

BIoo . . . Me.’ No.

Blood of the Lamb.

His slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All
are w ashed in the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth,
hymen, martyr, war, foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney
biirntoftering, druid’s altars. Elijah is coming. Dr John Alexander
Dowie, restorer of the church in Zion, is coming.

Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!!

.•ill heartily ^welcome.

Paving game. Torry and .Al<-xander last year. Polygamy. His
w ife will put the stopper on that. W here was that ad some Birmingham
firm the luminous crucifix? Our Saviour. Wake up in the dead of
night and see him on the wall, hanging. Pepper’s ghost idea. Iron
nails ran in.

Phospliorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for
instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to
the pantry in the kitchen. Don’t like all the smells in it waiting to
rush out. What was it she wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of
Spain. Before Rudy was born. The phosphorescence, that bluey
greeny. Very good for the brain.

From Butler’s monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor’s
walk. Dedalus’ daughter there still outside Dillon’s auctionrooms.
Mvjst be selling oft' some old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from
the father. Lobbing about waiting for him. Home ^ways breaks up
when the mother goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth every year
almost. That’s in their theology or the priest won’t give the poor
woman the confession, the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did
you ever hear such an idea? Eat you out of house and home. No
families themselves to feed. Living on the fat of the land. Their
butteries and larders. I’d like to see them do the black fast Yom
Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for fear he’d collapse
on the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellow's if you could pick
it out of her. Never pick it out of her. Like getting L. s. d. out of him.
Does himself well. No guests. All for number one. Watching his

140

water. Bring your own bread and butter. His reverence. .VIu'.ti’s tiie
word.

Good Lord, that poor child’s dress is in flitters. Underfed she
looks too. Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It’s after they
feel it. Proof of the pudding. Undermines the constitution.

As he set foot on O’Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up
from the parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea
air sours it, I heard. Be interesting some day get a pass through
Hancock to see the brewery. Regular world in itself. Vats of porter,
wonderful. Rats get in too. Drink themselves bloated as big as a
collie floating. Dead drunk on the porter. Drink till they puke again
like Christians. Imagine drinking that! Rats: vats. Well of course if
we knew all the things.

Looking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the
gaunt quay walls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself
down? Reuben J’s son must have sw'allowed a good bellyful of that
sewage. Onc and cightpence too much. Hhhhm. It’s the droll way
he comes out with the things. Knows how to tell a story too.

They wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait.

He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirty-
two feet per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the
wake of swells, floated under by the bridge piers. Not such damn fools.
Also the day I threw that stale cake out of the Erin’s King picked it
up in the wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled,
flapping.

The hungry Jam'tshed gull
Flaps o'er the waters dull.

That is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare
has no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The
thoughts. Solemn.

Hamlet^ 1 am thy Jather's spirit
Doomed jor a certain time to walk the earth.

— Tw'o apples a penny! Two for a penny!

His gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand.
Australians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them
up >Yith a rag or a handkerchief.

Wait. Those poor birds.

141 I

He halted again and bought from the old applewoman two
Banbury cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its
fragments down into the LifFey. See that? The gulls swooped silently
two, then all, from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every
morsel.

Aware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb
from his hands. They never expected that. Manna. Live on ‘fishy
flesh they have to, all sea birds, gulls, seagoosc. Swans from Anna
LilTcy swim down here sometimes to preen themselves. No accounting
for tastes. Wonder what kind is swanmeat. Robinson Crusoe had to
live on them.

They wheeled, flapping weakly. I’m not going to throw any more.
Penny quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They
spread foot and mouth disease too. If you cram a turkey, say, on
chestnut meal it tastes like that. Eat pig like pig. But then why is
it that saltwater fish are not salty? How is that?

His eyes sought answxr from the river and saw a rowboat rock at
anchor on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board.

Kino's

II/-

Trousfrs.

Good idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How
can you owm water really? It’s always flowing in a stream, never the
same, w’hich in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream.
All kind of places are good for ads. That quack doctor for the clap
used to be stuck up in all the greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly
confidential. Dr Hy Franks. Didn’t cost him a red like Maginni the
dancing master self advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or
slick them up himself for that matter on the q. t. running in to loosen
a button. Fly by night. Just the place too. Post No Bills. Post
1 lo Pills. Some chap with a dose burning him.

Ifhe . . .

O!

Eh?

No . . No.

No, no. I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t surely?

No, no.

Mr Bloom moved forward raising his troubled eyes. Think no more
about that. After one. Timcball on the ballast office is down. Dunsink

142

time. Fascinating little book that is of Sir Robert Ball’s. Parallax. I
never exactly understood. There’s a priest. Could ask him. Par it's
Greek: parallel, parallax. Met him pikehoses she called it till I told
her about the transmigration. O rocks!

Mr Bloom smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballast office. She’s
right after all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the
sound. She’s not exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I
was thinking. Still I don’t know. She used to say Ben Dollard had a
base barreltone voice. He has legs like barrels and you’d think he was
singing into a barrel. Now’, isn’t that wit? They used to call him big
Ben. Not half as witty as calling him base barreltone. Appetite like
an albatross. Get outside of a baron of beef. Powerful man he was at
storing away number one Bass. Barrel of Bass. Sec? It all works out.

A procession of whitesmocked men marched slowly towards him
along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like
that priest they are this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered.
He read the scarlet letters on their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S.
Wisdom Hely’s. Y lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under
his forcboard, crammed it into his mouth and munched as he walked.
Our staple food. Three bob a day, walking along the gutters, street
after street. Just keep skin and bone together, bread and skilly. They
arc not Boyl: no: M’Gladc’s men. Doesn’t bring in any business
cither. I suggested to him about a transparent show cart with two
smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blotting
paper. I bet that would have caught on. Smart girls writing something
catch the eye at once. Everyone dying to know what she’s writing.
Get twenty of them round you if you stare at nothing. Have a finger
in the pic. Women too. Curiosity. Pillar of salt. Wouldn’t have it
of course because he didn’t think of it himself first. Or the inkbottlc
I suggested with a false stain of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like
Plumtrcc’s potted under the obituaries, cold meat department. You
can’t lick ’em. What? Our envelopes. Hello! Jones, where arc you
going? Can’t stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only
reliable inkcrascr Kansell^ sold by Hely’s Ltd, 85 Dame Street. Well
out of that ruck I am. Devil of a job it was collecting accounts of those
convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really
sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure
she was crossed in love by her eyes. Very hard to bargain with that
sort of woman. I disturbed her at her devotions that morning. But

H3

gind (o communicate with the outside world. Our great day, she said.

Feast of Our Ladv of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. She

knew, I tltink she knew bv the way she. If she had married she would

# #

have changed. I suppose they really were short of money. Fried
everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them. My
heart’s broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and
out. Molly tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawn-
broker's daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire.

He crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by.
Rover cvclcshop. "I'hosc races are on today. How long ago is that?
Year Phil Gilligan died. Wc were in Lx)mbard street west. Wait, was
in Thom’s. Got the job in Wisdom Hely’s year we married. Six
years. Ten years ago: ninetyfour he died, yes that’s right, the big fire
at Arnott’s. Val Dillon was lord mayor. The Glencree dinner.
.Alderman Robert O’Reilly emptying the port into his soup before the
flag fell, Bobbob lapping it for the inner alderman. Couldn’t hear
what the band played. For what we have already received may the
Lord make us. Milly was a kiddy then. Molly had that clephantgrey
dress with the braided frogs. Mantailorcd with selfcovered buttons.
She didn’t like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore choir
picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old Goodwin’s tall hat done up
with some sticky stuflP. Flics’ picnic too. Never put a dress on her
back like it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulder and hips. Just beginning
to plump it out well. Rabbit pie we had that day. People looking
after her.

Happy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red
wallpaper, Dockrcll’s, one and ninepence a dozen. Milly’s tubbing
night. American soap I bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bath-
water. Funny she looked soaped all over. Shapely too. Now photo-
graphy. Poor papa’s daguerreotype atelier he told me of. Hereditary
taste.

He walked along the curbstone.

Stream of life. What was the name of that pricstylooking chap was
always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in
Citron’s saint Kevin’s parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My
memory is getting. Pen . . . ? Of course it’s years ago. Noise of the
trams probably. Well, if he couldn’t remember the dayfathcr’s name
that he secs every day.

Bartell d’Arcy was the tenor, Just coming out then. Seeing her

144

home after practice. Conceited fellow with his vvaxedup moustache.
Gave her that song Winds that blow jrom the south.

Windy night that was I v-’cnt to fetch her there was that lodge
meeting on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin’s concert in the
supper room or oakroom of the mansion house. He and I behind.
Sheet of her music blew out of my hand against the high school railings.
Lucky it didn’t. Thing like that spoils the effect of a night for her.
Professor Goodwin linking her in front. Shaky on his pins, poor old
sot. His farewell concerts. Positively last appearance on any stage.
May be for months and may be for never. Remember her laughing
at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of Harcourt road remember
that gust? Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered
old Goodwin. She did get Hushed in the wind. Remember when we
got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces of lap of mutton
for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. .^t»d the mulled
rum. Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the
busk of her stays. White.

Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. .Always warm from
her. Always liked to let herself out. Sitting there after till near two,
taking out her hairpins. .Milly tucked up in bcddyhousc. Happy.
Happy. That was the night . . .

— (), Mr Bloom, how do you do?

— O, how do you do, Mrs Breen?

— No use complaining. How is Molly those times? Haven’t seen
her for ages.

— In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily, Milly has a position down in
Mullingar, you know.

— Co away! Isn’t that grj^^d for her?

— Yes, in a photographer’s there. Getting on like a house on fire.
How arc all your charges?

— All on the baker’s list, Mrs Breen said.

How many has she? No other in sight.

— You’re in black I sec. You have no . . .

— No, Mr Bloom said. I have just come from a funeral.

Going to crop up all day, I foresee. W’ho’s dead, when and what did
he die of? Turn up like a bad penny.

— O dear me, Mrs Breen said, I hope it wasn’t any near relation.

May as well get her sympathy.

— Dignam, Mr Bloom said. An old friend of mine. He died quite

*45 ^

suddenly, poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this
morning.

Your juneral' s tomorrow
H hile you're coming through the rye.

DidJlediddle dumdum
Diddlediddle . . .

— Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Breen’s womaneyes said mclan-
cholily.

Now that’s quite enough about that. Just quietly: husband.

— And your lord and master.^

Mrs Breen turned up her two large eyes. Hasn’t lost them anyhow.

— O, don’t be talking, she said. He’s a caution to rattlesnakes. He’s
in there now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has
me heartscaldcd. Wait till I show you.

Hot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampulFs rolypoly
poured out from Harrison’s. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of
Mr Bloom’s gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour,
Demerara sugar, or they’d taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from hcr.^
A barefoot arab stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes.
Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it.^ Penny
dinner. Knife and fork chained to the table.

Opening her handbag, chipped leather, hatpin: ought to have a
guard on those things. Stick it in a chap’s eye in the tram. Rummag-
ing. Open. Money. Please take one. Devils if they lose sixpence.
Raise Cain. Husband barging. Where’s the ten shillings I gave you
on Monday? Are you feeding your little brother’s family? Soiled
handkerchief; medicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is she? . . .

— There must be a new moon out, she said. He’s always bad then.
Do you know what he did last night?

Her hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him
wide in alarm, yet smiling.

— What? Mr Bloom asked.

Let her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me.

— Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare.

Indiges.

— Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs.

— The ace of spades! Mr Bloom said.

She took a folded postcard from her handbag.

146

— Read that, she said. He got it this morning.

— What is it? Mr Bloom asked, taking the card. U. P.?

— U. P.; up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It’s a
great shame for them whoever he is.

— Indeed it is, Mr Bloom said.

She took back the card, sighing.

— And now he’s going round to Mr Menton’s office. He’s going to
take an action for ten thousand pounds, he says.

She folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch.
Same blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching.
Seen its best days. Wispish hair over her cars. .And that dowdy toque,
three old grapes to take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used
to be a tasty dresser. Lines round her mouth. Only a year or so older
than Molly.

Sec the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair se.x.
He looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent.
Pungent mockturtlc oxtail mulligatawny. I’m hungry loo. Flakes
of pastry on the gusset of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her
cheek. Rhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Josie
Powell that was. In Luke Doyle’s long ago. Dolphin’s Barn, the
charades. U. P.: up.

Change the subject.

— Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy, Mr Bloom asked.

— Mina Purefoy? she said.

Philip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers’ club. .Matcham often
thinks of the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act.
—Yes.

— I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She’s in the lying-
in hospital in Holies street. Dr Horne got her in. She’s three days
bad now.

— O, Mr Bloom said. I’m sorry to hear that.

— Yes, Mrs Breen said. And a houseful of kids at home. It’s a very
stiff birth, the nurse told me.

— O, Mr Bloom said.

His heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in

compassion. DthI Dthl ^

— I’m sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thingl Three daysl That s

terrible for her.

Mrs Breen nodded.

147

— She was taken bad on the Tuesday . . .

Mr Bloom touched her funnybone gently, warning her.

— Mind! Let this man pass.

A bony form strode along the curbstone from the river, staring with
a rapt gaze into the sunlight through a heavy stringed glass. Tight as
a skullpiccc a tiny hat gripped his head. From his arm a tolded dust-
coat, a stick and an umbrella dangled to his stride.

— Watch him, Mr Bloom said. He always walks outside the lamp-
posts. Watch!

— Who is he if it’s a fair question, Mrs Breen asked. Is he dotty?

— His nainc is Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell,
Mr Bloom said, smiling. Watch!

— He has enough of them, she said. Denis will be like that one of
these days.

She broke off suddenly.

— There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember
me to .Molly, won’t you?

— 1 will, Mr Bloom said.

He watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts.
Denis Breen in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out
of Harrison’s hugging two heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the
bay. Like old times. He suffered her to overtake him w'ithout surprise
and thrust his dull grey beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he
spoke earnestly.

Meshuggah. Off his chump.

Mr Bloom walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight
the tight skullpiccc, the dangling stick, umbrella, dustcoat. Going
the two days. Watch him! Out he goes again. One way of getting
on in the world. And that other old mosey lunatic in those duds.
Hard time she must have with him.

U. P.: up. ni take my oath that’s Alf Bergan or Richie Goulding.
Wrote it for a lark in the Scotch house, I bet anything. Round to
Menton’s office. His oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast
for the gods.

He passed the Irish Times. There might be other answers lying
there. Like to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code.
At their lunch now'. Clerk with the glasses there doesn’t know me.
O, leave them there to simmer. Enough bother wading through forty-
four of them. Wanted smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary

148

work. I called you naughtv darling because I do not like that other
world. Please tell me what is the meaning. Please tell me what
perfume does your wife. I cll me who made the world. The way they
spring those questions on you. .And the other one Lizzie Twigg.
My literary efforts have had tlic good fortune to meet with the
approval of the eminent poet A. E. (.^Ir Geo Russell). No time to
do her hair drinking sloppv tea with a book of poetry.

Best paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now .
Cook and general, exc cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for
spirit counter. Resp girl (R. C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or
pork shop. James Carlisle made that. Six and a half percent dividend.
.Made a big deal on Coates’s shares. Ca’canny. Cunning old Scotch
hunks. All the toady news. Our gracious and popular vicereine.
Bought the Iris/i h'u-id now. Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered
after her confinement and rode out vsith the Ward Union staghounds
at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath. Uneatable fox. Pot-
hunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for them.
Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man. Weightcarrying huntress.
No sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Joe. First to the meet and in
at the death. Strong as a brood marc some of those horsey w'omen.
Swagger around livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while
you’d say knife. That one at the Gros\enor this morning. Up with
her on the car: wishwish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount
to it. Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite. Who is this she
was like? G ves! .Mrs .Miriam Dandradc that sold me her old wraps
and black underclothes in the Shclbourne hotel. Divorced Spanish
American. Didn’t take a feather out of her my handling them. .As
if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when Stubbs
the park ranger got me in with hclan of the Kxprgss. Scavenging
what the quality left. High tea. .Mayonnaise I poured on the plums
thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few
weeks after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery
work for her, thanks.

Poor Mrs Purefoy! -Methodist husband. .Method in his madness.
Saffron bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Eating
with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. Still his muttonchop
whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore’s cousin in
Dublin Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals he
presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers marching

>49

along bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one in a marketnet.
The squallers. Poor thing! Then having to give the breast year after
year all hours of the night. Selfish those t.t’s are. Dog in the manger.
Only one lump of sugar in my tea, if you please.

He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval a sixpenny at
Rowe’s? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny
in the Burton. Better. On my way.

He walked on past Bolton’s Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea.
I forgot to tap Tom Kcrnan.

Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a
vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen outi
Phew! Dreadful simplyl Child’s head too big; forceps. Doubled up
inside her trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out.
Kill me that would. Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought
to invent something to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilightslecp
idea: queen Victoria was given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old
woman that lived in a shoe she had so many children. Suppose he was
consumptive. Time someone thought about it instead of gassing about
the what was it the pensive bosom of the silver eflPulgence. Flapdoodle
to feed fools on. They could easily have big establishments. Whole
thing quite painless out of all the taxes give every child born five quid
at compound interest up to twentyonc, five per cent is a hundred
shillings and five tiresome pounds, multiply by twenty decimal system,
encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit
twentyonc years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum, more
than you think.

Not stillborn of course. They arc not even registered. Trouble for
nothing.

Funny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Molly and
Mrs Moisei. Mothers’ meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being,
then returns. How flat they look after all of a suddeni Peaceful eyes.
Weight off their minds. Old Mrs Thornton was a jolly old soul. All
my babies, she said. The spoon of pap in her mouth before she fed
them. O, that’s nyumyum. Got her hand crushed by old Tom Wall’s
son. His first bow to the public. Head like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy
Dr Murren. People knocking them up at all hours. For God’sakc
doctor. Wife in her throes. Then keep them waiting months for their
fee. To attendance on your wife. No gratitude in people. Humane
doctors, most of them.

*50

Before the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock
of pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on?
I pick the fellow in black. Here goes. Here’s good luck. Must be
thrilling from the air. Apjohn, myself and Owen Goldberg up in the
trees near Goose green playing the monkeys. Mackerel they
called me.

A squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in
Indian file. Goose step. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting
their truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under
their belts. Policeman’s lot is oft a happy one. They split up into
groups and scattered, saluting towards their beats. Let out to graze.
Best moment to attack one in pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A
squad of others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings,
making for the station. Bound for their troughs. Prepare to receive
cavalry. Prepare to receive soup.

He crossed under Tommy Moore’s roguish finger. They did right
to put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places
for women. Running into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. There
is not in this loide -world a vallee. Great song of Julia Morkan’s. Kept
her voice up to the very last. Pupil of Michael Balfe’s wasn’t she?

He gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Jack
Power could a talc unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them
trouble being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the bride-
well. Can’t blame them after all with the job they have especially the
young hornies. That horse policeman the day Joe Chamberlain was
given his degree in Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he
didi His horse’s hoofs clattering after us down Abbey street. Luck I
had the presence of mind to dive into Manning’s or I was souped. He
did come a wallop, by George. Must have cracked his skull on the
cobblestones. I oughtn’t to have got myself swept along with those
medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their mortarboards. Looking for
trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon who dressed that sting
for me in the Mater and now he’s in Holies street where Mrs Purefoy.
Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my cars still. All skedaddled.
Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it began.

— Up the Boers!

— Three cheers for De Wet!

— Wc’ll hang Joe Chamberlain on a sourapplc tree.

Silly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill.

* 5 *

The Butter exchange band. Few years time half of them magistrates
and civil servants. War comes on: into the army hclterskelter: same
fellows used to whether on the scaffold high.

Never know who you’re talking to. Corny Kclleher he has Harvey
Duff in his eye. Like that Peter or Denis or James Carey that blew the
gaff on the invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw
youths on to get in the know. All the time drawing secret service pay
from the castle. Drop him like a hot potato. Why those plain clothes
men are always courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform.
Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next
thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there?
Was the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the
keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling round her
fat arms ironing.

— Arc those yours, Mary?

—I don’t wear such things . . . Stop or I’ll tell the missus on you.
Out half the night.

— There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you sec.

— Ah, get along with your great times coming.

Barmaids too. Tobacco shopgirls.

James Stephens’ idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten
so that a fellow couldn’t round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein.
Back out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in, the firing squad.
Turnkey’s daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting
up in the Buckingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi.

You must have a ccrlaitj fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a
squarehcaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Want to
gas about our lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery
Company’s tearoom. Debating societies. That republicanism is the
best form of government. That the language question should take
precedence of the economic question. Have your daughters inveigling
them to your house. Stuff them up with meat and drink. Michaelmas
goose. Here’s a good lump of thyme seasoning under the apron for
you. Have another quart of goosegreasc before it gets too cold.
Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with the band. No grace
for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays best sauce in
the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Shove us over those
apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Home Rule sun
rising up in the northwest.

152

His smile faded as he walked, a heavy cMud hiding the sun slowly,
shadowing Trinity’s surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing,
outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same; day after
day: squads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two
loonies mooching about. Dignam carted off. .Mina Purefoy swolleit
belly on a bed groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One
born every second somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I
fed the birds five minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket. Other
three hundred born, w’ashing the blood off, all arc washed in the blood
of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa.

Cityful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other
coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of pave-
ments, piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that.
Landlord never dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets
his notice to quit. They buy the place up with gold and still they have
all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, w’orn aw'ay
age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions. Slaves.
Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble,
sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt, Kerwan’s mushroom houses, built ot
breeze. Shelter for the night.

No one is anything.

This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy:
hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spew'cd.

Provost’s house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well
tinned in there. Wouldn’t live in it if they paid me. Hope they have
liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.

The sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silver
ware in Walter Sexton’s w’indow' opposite by which John Howard
Parnell passed, unseeing.

There he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now
that’s a coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person
and don’t meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows
him. Must be a corporation meeting today. They say he never put
on the city marshal’s uniform since he got the job. Charley Boulgcr
used to come out on his high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and
shaved. Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg.
Poached eyes on ghost. I have a pain. Great man’s brother: his
brother’s brother. He’d look nice on the city charger. Drop into the
D. B. C. probably for his coffee, play chess there. His brother used

153

men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to pass a remark on
him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That’s the fascination: the
name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister Mrs
Dickinson driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright like surgeon
M'Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for south Meath. Apply for
the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The patriot’s
banquet. Fating orangcpcels in the park. Simon Dedalus said when
they put him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the
grave and lead him out ol the House of Commons by the arm.

— Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon
w liich the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other
speaks w itli a Scotch accent. The tentacles . . .

They passed from behind Mr Bloom along the curbstone. Beard
and bicycle. Young woman.

And there he is too. Now that’s really a coincidence: secondtime.
Coming events cast their shadows before. ^Vith the approval of the
emiment poet Mr Geo Russell. That might be Lizzie Twigg with
him. A. E. : what docs that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward,
.Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying?
I'he ends of the world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus.
Something occult: symbolism. Holding forth. She’s taking it all in.
Not saying a word. To aid gentleman in literary w'ork.

His eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle,
a listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only

eggebobbles and fruit. Don’t cat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes
ot that cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it’s
healthier. Wind and watery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run
all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that
thing they gave me nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you
the idea you arc eating rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook
in soda. Keep you sitting by the tap all night.

Her stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless.
1 hose literary ethcrial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbol-
istic. Esthetes they are. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was that kind of
food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical. For
example one of those policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts;
you couldn’t squeeze a line of poetry out of him. Don’t know what
poetry is even. Must be in a certain mood.

* 5 +

The dreamy cloudy gull
If axes o'er the '-xaters dull.

He crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of
Ycatcs and Son, pricing the field glasses. Or will I drop into old
Harris’s and have a chat with voung Sinclair? W’ellmannered fellow.
Probably at his lunch. .Must get those old glasses of mine set right.
Gctrz lenses, six guineas. Germans making their way everywhere.
Sell on easy terms to capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on
a pair in the railway lost property office. Astonishing the things people
leave behind them in trains and cloak rooms. W’hat do they be think-

r

ing about? Women too. Incredible. Last year travelling to Ennis
had to pick up that farcncr’s daughter’s bag and hand it to her at
Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There’s a little watch
up there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by.

His lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can’t see it. If
you imagine it’s there you can almost see it. Can’t see it.

He faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his
right hand at arm’s length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often.
Yes; completely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun’s disk.
Must be the focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interest-
ing. There was a lot of talk about those sunspots when we were in
Lombard street w’cst. 'I'crrific explosions they are. There will be a
total eclipse this year: autumn some time.

Now that I come to think of it, that ball falls at Greenwich time.
It’s the clock is worked by an electric wife from Dunsink. .Must go
out there some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduc-
tion to professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That
would do to; man always feels complimented. Flattery where least
expected. Nobleman proud to be descended from some king’s
mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a trow'el. Cap in hand goes
through the land. Not go in and blurt out what you know you’re not
to; what’s parallax? Show this gentleman the door.

Ah.

His hand fell again to his side.

Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning
about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas,
then solid, then world, then cold, then dead shell drifting around,
frozen rock like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new
moon, she said. I believe there is.

155

He went on by la Maison Claire.

ait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight
exactly there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad
tor a P'airview moon. She was humming; The young May moon she’s
beaming, love. He other side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm’s
la-amp is gleaming, love. Touch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.

Stop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.

Mr Bloom, quick breathing, slowlicr walking, passed Adam court.

With a keep quiet relief, his eyes took note: this is street here middle
ot the day Bob Doran’s bottle shoulders. On his annual bend, M'Coy
said. 1 hey drink in order to say or do something or cherchez la femme.
Up in the Coon^be with chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest
of tile year as sober as a judge.

^ es. 1 bought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda
would do him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before
\\ hitbred ran the Queen’s. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business
with his harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty .Maids
trom School. How time flics eh? Showing long red pantaloons under
his skirts. Drinkers, drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against
their brcatli. .More power, Pat. Coarse red; fun for drunkards:
gulfaw and smoke. Take off that white hat. His parboiled eyes.
W’here is he now ? Beggar somewhere. The harp that once did starve
us .ill.

I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentycight
I was. Slie iwcntythrce when we left Lombard street w'cst something
changed. Could never like it again after Rudy. Can’t bring back
time. Like holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then?
Just beginning then. Would you? Arc vou not happy in your home,
you poor little naughty boy? Wants to sew’ on buttons for me. I
must answer. \\’ritc it in the library.

Grafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin
prints, silk, dames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds
lowringing in the baking causeway. Thick feet that w'oman has in
the white stockings. Hope the rain mucks them up on her. Country
bred chawbacon. All the beef to the heels were in. Always gives a
w'oman clumsy feet. Molly looks out jf plumb.

He passed, dallying, the window's of Brown Thomas, silk mercers.
Cascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its
tnouth a flood of bloodhued poplin; lustrous blood. The huguenots

*56

brought that here. La causa c santa! Tara rara. Great chorus that.
Tara. Must be washed in rainwater. .Meverbeer. Tara: bom bom
bom.

Pincushions. I’m a long time threatening to buy one. Stick them
all over the place. Needles in window curtains.

He bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today
anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps,
unejuly augseptember eighth. Nearly three months oft. Then she
mightn’t like it. Women won’t pick up pins. Say it cuts lo.

Gleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat
silk stockings.

Useless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.

High voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. .'Ml for a woman,
home and houses, silk webs, silver, rich fruits, spicy from Jaffa.
Agendath Netaim. Wealth ot the world.

A warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain
yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh
obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.

Duke street. Here we are. .Vlust eat. 'I'hc Burton. Feel better
then.

He turned Combridge’s corner, still pursued. Jingling hoofthuds.
Perfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer
fields, tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along
sofas, creaking beds.

— Jack, love!

— Darling!

— Kiss me, Reggy !

— My boy!

— Love!

His heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink
gripped his trembling breath: pungent n^eatjuicc, slop of greens. See
the animals feed.

Men, men, men.

Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables
calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy
food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced
young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin.
New set of microbes. A man with an infant’s saucestained napkin
tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup dow’n his gullet. A man

*57

spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: no teeth to chcwchew-
chew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad
booser’s eyes. Bitten otf more than he can chew. Am I like that? See
ourselves as others sec us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working
tooth and jaw. Don’t! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland
Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the
Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint
Patrick converted him to Christianity. Couldn’t swallow it all however.

— Roast beef and cabbage.

— One stew'.

Smells of men. His gorge rose. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish
cigarette smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men’s beery piss, the stale of
ferment.

Couldn’t eat a morsel here. Fellow’ sharpening knife and fork, to
eat all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full,
chewing the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this
picture then on that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of
bread. Lick it off the plate, man! Get out of this.

He gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings
of his nose.

— Two stouts here.

— One corned and cabbage.

That fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life
depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to
cat from his three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to
him. Born with a silver knife in his mouth. That’s witty, I think. Or
no. Silver means born rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion
is lost.

An illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the bailiff,
standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up:
it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright,
elbows on table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift
across his stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him some-
thing with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I
munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you,
faith?

Mr Bloom raised two fingers doubtfully to his Ups. His eyes said.

— Not here. Don’t sec him.

Out. I hate dirty eaters.

He backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne’s.
Stopgap. Keep me going. Had a good breakfast.

— Roast and mashed here.

— Pint of stout.

Every fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp.
GobstufF.

He came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street.
Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!

Suppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All
trotting down with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour
contents in the street. John Howard Parnell example the provost of
Trinity every mother’s son don’t talk of your provosts and provost of
Trinity women and children, cabmen, priests, parsons, fieldmarshals,
archbishops. From Ailesbury road, Clyde road, artisans’ dwellings,
north Dublin union, lord mayor in his gingerbread coach, old queen
in a bathchair. My plate’s empty. After you with our incorporated
drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton’s fountain. Rub off the
microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new batch
with his. Father O'Flynn would make hares of them all. Have rows
all the same. All for number one. Children fighting for the scrapings
of the pot. Want a soup pot as big as the Pheenix Park. Harpooning
flitches and hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round you. City
Arms hotel table d'hbte she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never
know whose thoughts you’re chewing. Then who’d wash up all the
plates and forks.^ Might be all feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth
getting worse and worse.

After all there’s a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from
the earth garlic, of course, it stinks Italian organgrinders crisp of
onions, mushrooms truffles. Pain to animal too. Pluck and draw fowl.
Wretched brutes there at the cattlcmarkci waiting for the poleaxe to
split their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Stagger-
ing bob. Bubble and squeak. Butchers’ buckets wobble lights. Give
us that brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones.
Flayed glasscycd sheep hung from their haunches, shcepsnouts
bloodypapcrcd snivelling nosejam on sawdust. Top and lashers going
out. Don’t maul them pieces, young one.

Hot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed.
Insidious. Lick it up, smoking hot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.

Ah, I’m hungry.

*59

He entered Davy Bvrne’s. Moral pub. He doesn’t chat. Stands
a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque
tor me once.

\\’hat will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now.
Shandygaff?

— Hellou’, Bloom! Nosey Flynn said from his nook.

— Hello, Flynn.

#

— How’s things?

— Tiptop . . . Let me see. Til take a glass of burgundy and . . .
let me see.

Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich?
Ham and his descendants mustered and bred there. Potted meats.
What is home without Plumtrce’s potted meat? Incomplete. What
a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plum-
tree. Dignam’s potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice.
\N'hite missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief
consumes the parts of honour. Ought to be tough from exercise. His
wives in a row to watch the effect. There was a right royal old nigger.
If 'ho ate or something the somethings oj the reverend Mr MacTrigger.
With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows w’hat concoction. Cauls mouldy
tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher.
No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what they call now.
Yom kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on
some fellow’s digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese.
Slaughter of innocents. Eat, drink and be merry. Then casual wards
full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mighty
cheese.

— Have you a cheese sandwich?

— Yes, sir.

Like a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good
glass of burgundy; take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as
a cucumber. Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive
oil. Milly served me that cutlet with a sprig of parsley. .Take one
Spanish onion. God made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled crab.

— Wife well?

—Quite w'cll, thanks ... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola,
have you?

— Yes, sir.

Nosey Flynn sipped his grog.

1 6o

— Doing any singing those times?

Look at his mouth. Could whistle in his own car. Flap cars to
match. Music. Knows as much about it as mv coachman. Still better
tell him. Does no harm. Free ad.

— She’s engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may liave
heard perhaps.

— No. O, that’s the style. Who’s getting it up?

The curate scrx'cd.

— How much is that?

— Seven d., sir . . . Thank you, sir.

.Mr Bloom cut his sandwich into slender strips. Mr MacTrigger.
Easier than the dreamy creamy stuff. His Jive hundred wves. Had the
time oj their lives.

— Mustard, sir?

— Thank you.

He studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. Their lives. I
have it. It grew bigger and bigger and bigger.

— Getting it up? he said. Well, it’s like a company idea, you sec.
Part shares and part profits.

— Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his
pocket to scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn’t Blazes
Boylan mixed up in it?

A warm shock of air heat of mustard hauched on Mr Bloom’s heart.
He raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub
clock five minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not

His midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more
longly, longingly.

Wine.

He smcllsippcd the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to
speed it, set his wineglass delicately dow-n.

— Yes, he said. He’s the organiser in point of fact.

No fear. No brains.

Nosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square
meal.

-—He had a good slice of luck. Jack Mooney was telling me, over
that boxing match .Mylcr Keogh won again that soldier in the Porto-
bcllo barracks. By God, he had the little kipper down in the county
Carlow he was telling me . . .

i6i

M

Hope that dcwdrop doesn’t come down into his glass. No, snuffled
it up.

— For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs
by God till further orders. Keep him off the boose, see.^ O, by God,
Blazes is a hairy chap

Davy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched shirt-
sleeves, cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring’s blush.
Whose smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete. Too
much fat on the parsnips.

— And here’s himself and pepper on him. Nosey Flynn said. Can
you give us a good one for the Gold cup?

— I’m off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put
anything on a horse.

— You’re right there. Nosey Flynn said.

Mr Bloom ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish
of disgust, pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips
of his wine soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this
weather with the chill off.

Nice quiet bar. Nice piecx. of wood in that counter. Nicely planed.
Like the way it curves there.

— I wouldn’t do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It
ruined many a man the same horses.

Vintners’ sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits
for consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose.

— True for you. Nosey Flynn said. Unless you’re in the know.
There’s no straight sport going now. Lenehan gets some good ones.
He’s giving Sceptre today. Zinfandel’s the favourite, lord Howard dc
Walden’s, won at Epsom. Morny Cannon is riding him. I could have
got seven to one against Saint Amant a fortnight before.

— That 80? Davy Byrne said . . .

He went towards the window and, taking up the petty cash book,
scanned its pages.

— I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said snuffling. That was a rare bit of
horseflesh. Saint Frusquin w'as her sire. She won in a thunderstorm,
Rothschild’s filly, with wadding in her cars. Blue jacket and yellow
cap. Bad luck to big Ben Dollard and his John O’Gaunt. He put me
off it. Ay.

He drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the
flutes.

162

— Ay, he said, sighing.

Mr Bloom, champing standing, looked upon his sigh. Xosey
numskull. Will I tell him that horse Lenehan.^ He knows already.
Better let him forget. Go and lose more. Fool and his money.
Dewdrop coming down again. Cold nose he'd have kissing a woman.
Still they might like. Prickly beards they like. Dog's cold noses.
Old Mrs Riordan wdth the rumbling stomach’s Skye terrier in the
City Arms hotel. Molly fondling him in her lap. O the big doggy-
bowwowsy wowsy !

Wine soaked and softened rolled pith ot bread mustard a moment
mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I’m not
thirsty. Bath of course docs that. Just a bite or two. Then about
six o'clock I can. Six, si.x. Time will be gone then. She . . .

Mild fire of wine kindled his veins. 1 wanted that badly. Felt so
off colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins, sardines, gaudy
lobsters’ claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of
shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground tlie
French cat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing
in a thousand years. If you didn’t know risky putting anything into
your mouth. Poisonous berries, johnny Magorics. Roundness you
think good. Gaudy colour warns you off^. One fellow told another
and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look.
Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for
instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtrcustrassc. \esbut what
about oysters? Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil
to open them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed
on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effcct'on the sexual. .Aphrodis.
He was in the Red bank this morning. Was he oyster old fish at table.
Perhaps he young flesh in bed. No. June has no ar no oysters. But
there arc people like tainted game, jugged hare. First catch your
hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue and green again.
Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. Idea
for a poison mystery. That archduke Leopold was it? No. Yes, or
was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to cat the
scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course,
aristocrats. Then the others copy to be in the fashion. Milly too rock
oil and flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they
throw back in the sea to keep up the price. Cheap. No one would
buy. Caviare. Do the grand. Hock in green glasses. Swell blow’out.

163

Lady this. Powdered bosom pcaHs. The Hite. Creme de la creme.
1 hey want special dishes to pretend they’re. Hermit with a platter of
pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come cat with me.
Royal sturgeon. High sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons
of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I
saw down in the Master of the Rolls’ kitchen area. Whitchatted chej
like a rabbi. Combustible duck. C\xr\y d la duchesse de Parme.

fust as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you’ve
eaten too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it
with Edwards' desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters
boiled alive. Do ptakc some ptarmigan. Wouldn’t mind being a
waiter in a sw ell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnakcd ladies. May I
tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat.^ Yes, do
bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss
Dubedat lived in Killiney I remember. Du, de la, French. Still it’s
the same fish, perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the
guts out of making money, hand over fist, finger in fishes’ gills, can’t
write his name on a cheque, think he was painting the landscape with
his mouth twisted. Moooikill A Aitcha Ha. Ignorant as a kish of
brogues, worth fifty thousand pounds.

Stuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.

Glowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the
winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun’s heat it is. Seems to a secret
touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered.
Hidden under wild ferns on How'th. Below us bay sleeping sky. No
sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion’s head. Green by
Drumlcck. Yellowgrccn towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the
lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had
her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you’ll
toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched
me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her
I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me
in my mouth the seedcake warm and chew'cd. Mawkish pulp her
mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy.
Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft, warm, sticky gum>
jclly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell.
She lay still. A goat. No-one. High on Ben Howth rhododendrons
a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under
ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her; eyes,

164

her lips, her stretched neck, beating, woman’s breasts full in her
blouse of nun’s veiling, fat nipples upright. Hot I tongued her. She
kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she
kissed me.

Me. And me now.

Stuck, the flies buzzed.

His downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab.
Beauty; it curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno;
curves the world admires. Can sec them library museum standing in
the round hall, naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don’t care
what man looks. All to see. Never speaking, I mean to say to fellows
like Flynn. Suppose she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she
say first? Mortal! Put you in your proper place. Quaffing nectar at
mess with gods, golden dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch
we have, boiled mutton, carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar,
imagine it drinking electricity: gods’ food. Lovely forms of woman
sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. .And we stuffing food in one
hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to
feed it like stoking an engine. They have no. Never looked. I’ll look
today. Keeper won’t sec. Bend down let something fall sec if she.

Dribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not
to do there to do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees
and walked, to men too they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay
with men lovers, a youth enjoyed her, to the yard.

When the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his
book:

— What is this he is? Isn’t he in the insurance line?

— He’s out of that long ago. Nosey Flynn said. He docs canvassing
for the Freeman.

— I know him well to sec, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble?

— Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why?

— I noticed he was in mourning.

— Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how
was all at home. You’re right, by God. So he was.

— I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I sec a
gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their
minds.

— It’s not the wife anyhow. Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day
before yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy John

165

V\ ysc Nolan’s wife has in Henry street with ajar of cream in his hand
taking it home to his better half. She’s well nourished, I tell you.
Plovers on toast.

— And is he doing for the Freeman? Davy Byrne said.

Nosey Flynn pursed his lips.

—He doesn’t buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make
bacon of that.

— How so.^ Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book.

Nosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He
winked.

— He’s in the craft, he said.

— Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said.

—Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted
order. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg up. I was
told that by a, well, I won’t say who.

— Is that a fact?

— O, it’s a fine order. Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when
you’re down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it, but they’re as
close as damn it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it.
Davy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one:

— liiiiichaaaaaaach !

—There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock
to find out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her
out and swore her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the
Saint Legers of Doncrailc.

Davy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tcarwashed eyes:

—And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in
here and I never once saw him, you know, over the line.

—God Almighty couldn’t make him drunk. Nosey Flynn said
firmly. Slips off when the fun gets too hot. Didn’t you see him look at
his watch? Ah, you weren’t there. If you ask him to have a drink
first thing he does he outs with the watch to see what he ought to
imbibe. Declare to God he does.

—There arc some like that, Davy Byrne said. He’s a safe man, I’d
say.

® not too bad. Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He has been

known to put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his

due. O, Bloom has his good points. But there’s one thing he’ll
never do.

i66

His hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.

— I know, Davy Byrne said.

— Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.

Paddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford
followed, a plaining hand on his claret waistcoat.

— Day, Mr Byrne.

— Day, gentlemen.

They paused at the counter.

— Who’s standing.^ Paddy Leonard asked.

— I’m sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered.

— Well, what’ll it be? Paddy Leonard asked.

— I’ll take a stone ginger. Bantam Lyons said.

— How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God’s sake?
What’s yours, Tom?

— How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping.

For answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and
hiccupped.

— Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said.
— Certainly, sir.

Paddy Leonard eyed his alemat^s.

— Lord love a duck, he said, look at what I’m standing drinks tol
Cold water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off
a sore leg. He has some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup.
A dead snip.

— Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked.

Tom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set
before him.

—That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking.

— Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said.

Tom Rochford nodded and drank.

— Is it Zinfandel?

—Say nothing, Bantam Lyons winked. I’m going to plunge five

bob on my own. n jj

Tell us if you’re worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy

Leonard said. Who gave it to you?

Mr Bloom on his way out raised three fingers in greeting.

—So long. Nosey Flynn said.

The others turned.

—That’s the man now that gave it to me. Bantam Lyons whispered.

167

— Prnvht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we’ll
take two of your small Jamesons after that and a . . .

— Stone ginger. Daw Byrne added civilly.

— Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby.

.Mr Bloom v\alked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his
teeth smooth. Something green it would have to be: spinach say.
'riien with those Rontgen rays searchlight you could.

At Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on
the cobble stones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with
thanks having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury.
Mr Bloom coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their
upper jaw they move. Wonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with
that invention of his. Wasting time explaining it to Flynn’s mouth.
Lean people long mouths. Ought to be a hall or a place where
inventors could go in and invent free. Course then you’d have all the
cranks pestering.

He hummed, prolonging in solemn echo, the closes of the bars:

Don Giovanni, a cenar teco
M'invitasti.

Feel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first?
Some chap in the blues. Dutch courage. That Kilkenny People in the
national library now I must.

Bare clean closcstools, waiting, in the window of William Miller,
plumber, turned back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the
way down, swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after,
tour round the body, changing biliary duct, spleen squirting liver,
gastric juice coils of intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would
have to stand all the time with his insides entrails on show. Science.

— A cenar teco.

What does that teco mean? Tonight perhaps.

Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited
To come to supper tonight.

The rum the rumdum.

Doesn’t go properly.

Keyes: two months if 1 get Nannctti to. That’ll be two pounds ten,
about two pounds eight. Three Hynes owes me. Two eleven.
Presscott s ad. Two fifteen. Five guineas about. On the pig’s back.

i68

Could buy one of those silk petticoats for Molly, colour of her new
garters.

Today. Today. Not think.

Tour the south then. What about English watering places^
Brighton, .Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice rioating out.
Those lovely seaside girls, .^gainst John Long’s a drowsing loafer
lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man
wants job. Small wages. W'ill eat anything.

Mr Bloom turned at Gray’s confectioner’s window of unbought
tarts and passed the reverend Thomas Connellan’s bookstore. Jf'hy I
lejt the church oj Rome':' Bird's Nest. Women run him. They say
they used to give pauper children soup to change to protestants in the
time of the potato blight. Society over the way papa went to for the
conversion of poor jews. Same bait. \N'hy v\c left the church ol
Rome?

A blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane.
No tram in sight. Wants to cross.

—Do you want to cross? .Mr Bloom asked.

The blind stripling did not answer. His wall face frowned weakly.
He moved his head uncertainly.

—You’re in Dawson street, Mr Bloom said. .Molesworth street is
opposite. Do you want to cross? There’s nothing in the way.

The cane moved out trembling to the left. .Mr Bloom s eye tollowcd
its line and saw’ again the dyeworks’ van drawn up before Drago s.
Where I saw' his brilliantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping.
Driver in John Long’s. Slaking his drouth.

—There’s a van there, .Mr Bloom said, but it’s not moving. I’ll
see you across. Do you want to go to .Vlolcsvvorth street?

— Yes, the stripling answxred. South Frederick street.

— Come, Mr Bloom said.

He touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand
to guide it forw’ard.

Say something to him. Belter not do the condescending. They
mistrust what you tell them. Pass a common remark.

— The rain kept oft.

No answer. ^ „ .-.r

Stains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different

for him. Have to be spoonfed 6rst. Like a child’s hand his hand.

Like Milly’s was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand.

169

\\ . iK^cr it he has a name. Van. Keep his cane clear of the horse’s legs
tirici drudge get his doze. That’s right. Clear. Behind a bull: in
tremt of a liorsc.

— 1 hanks, sir.

Knows I’m a man. Voice.

— Right now.^ First turn to the left.

The blind stripling tapped the curbstone .and went on his way,
dr.iu’ing his cane back, feeling again.

Mr Bloom walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herring-
b(ine tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van
was therc.^ Must have felt it. See things in their foreheads perhaps.
Kind of sense of volume. Weight. Would he feel it if something was
removed? Feel a gap. Queer idea of Dublin he must have, tapping
liis way round by the stones. Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn’t
tliat cane? Bloodless pious face like a fellow going in to be a priest.

P« nrosc! That was that chap’s name.

Look at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers.

1 une pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we
tltink a deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something
\\c might say. Of course the other senses arc more. Embroider. Plait
baskets. People ought to help. Work basket I could buy Molly’s
birthday. Hates sewing. Might take an objection. Dark men they
call them.

Sense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides bunched
togctlier. Each person too. Then the spring, the summer: smells.
I astes. They say you can’t taste wines with your eyes shut or a cold
in the head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure.

And with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That
girl passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I
have them all on. Must be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in
liis mind’s eye. The voice temperature when he touches her with
fingers must almost see the lines, the curves. His hands on her hair,
for instance. Say it was black for instance. Good. We call it black.
I hen passing over her white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling
of white.

Postoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two
sliillings half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer’s just here
too. Wait. Think over it.

U’ilh a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back

170

above his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his
finger felt the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not
smooth enough. The bellv is the smoothest. Xo-one about. There
he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to Levenston’s dancing
academy piano. Might be settling mv braces.

\Valking by Doran’s public liouse he slid his hand between waist-
coast and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of
his belly. But I know it’s whitcvcllow. Want to try m the dark to see.

I le withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to.

Poor follow’! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams
would he have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice
being born that way? -All those women and children excursion
beanfeast burned and drowned in New York. Holocaust. Karma
they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life the reincarna-
tion met him pikehoses. Dear, dear, dear. Pity of course: but
somehow you can’t cotton on to them someway.

Sir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons’ hall. Solemn as
Troy. After his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies
cracking a magnum. Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the
bluecoat school. I sentenced him to ten years. I suppose he’d turn
up his nose at that stuff I drank. Vintage wine for them, the year
marked on a dusty bottle. Has his own ideas of justice in the recorder’s
court. Wellmeaning old man. Police chargeshects crammed with
cases get their percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them to the
rightabout. The devil on moneylenders. Gave Reuben J. a great
strawcalling. Now he’s really w'hat they call a dirty jcw’. Power those
judges have. Crusty old topc;-s in W'igs. Bear with a sore paw. And
may the Lord have mercy on your soul.

Hello, placard, Mirus bazaar. His excellency the lord lieutenant.
Sixteenth today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer’s hospital. The
Messiah was first given for that. Yes Handel. What about going out
there. Ballsbridgc. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a
leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate.

Mr Bloom came to Kildare Street, First I must. Library.

Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. 1; is.

His heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He
swerved to the right.

Is it? Almost certain. Won’t look. Wine in my face. Why did I?
Too heady. Yes, it is. The walk. Not see. Not sec. Get on,

171

Making for the museum gate with long windy strides he lifted his
eyes. Handsome building. Sir Thomas Deane designed. Not
tollovving me?

Didn’t sec me perhaps. Light in hi.', eves.

I he flatter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold
statues; quiet there. Safe in a minute.

No, didii’t see me. After two. Just at the gate.

Mv heart!

His eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir
rhomas Deane was the Greek architecture.

Look for something I.

His hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded
-Agcndath Netaim. Where did I?

Busy looking for.

He thrust back quickly Agcndath.

Afternoon she said.

I am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handkcr.
Freeman. ^Vhc^c did I.^ Ah, yes. Trousers. Purse. Potato. Where
did I?

Hurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart.

His hand looking for the W'here did I put found in his hip pocket
soap lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah, soap there! Yes. Gate.

Safe!

★ Urbane, to comfort them, the Quaker librarian purred:

— And we have, have w'c not, those priceless pages of Wilhelm
Meister? A great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul
taking arms against a sea of troubles, torn bv conflicting doubts, as one
secs in real life.

He came a step a sinkapace forward on ncatslcathcr creaking and a
step backw-ard a sinkapace on the solemn floor.

A noiseless attendant, setting open the door but slightly, made him
a noiseless beck.

— Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful
ineffectual dreamer w'ho comes to grief against hard facts. One always
feels that Goethe’s judgments arc so true. True in the larger analysis.

Twicrcakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the

172

door he gave his large ear all to the attendant’s words; heard them:
and was gone.

Two left.

— Monsieur dc la Palissc, Stephen sneered, was alive fifteen minutes
before his death.

— Have you found those six brave medicals, John Eglinton asked
with elder’s gall, to write Paradise Lost at your dictation? The Sorro^^s
of Satan he calls it.

Smile. Smile Cranlv’s smile.

First he tickled her
Then he patted her
Then he passed the female catheter.

For he was a medical
folly old medi . . .

— I feel you would need one more for Hamlet. Seven is dear to the
mystic mind. The shining seven W. B. calls them.

Glittcreyed, his rufous skull close to his grccncappcd desklamp
sought the face, bearded amid darkgrccncr shadow, an ollav, holycyed.
He laughed low: a sizar’s laugh of Trinity: unanswered.

Orchestral Satan^ weeping many a rood

Tears such as angels weep.

Ed egli avea del cul fatto trombetta.

He holds my follies hostage.

Cranly’s eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sircland. Gaptoothed
Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house.
And one more to hail him: ave^ rabbi. The Tinahely i..'elvc. In the
shadow of the glen he cooees for them. My soul’s youth I gave him,
night by night. Godspeed. Good hunting.

Mulligan has my telegram.

Folly. Persist.

— Our young Irish bards, John Eglinton censured, have yet to create
a figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare’s Hamlet
though I admire him, as old Ben did, on this side idolatry.

— All these questions arc purely academic, Russell oracled out of
his shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or
Essex. Clergymen’s discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to
reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question

173

about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The
painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest
poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our mind into contact
with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the
speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.

A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation
strike me!

— The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Stephen said superpolitely.
Aristotle was once Plato’s schoolboy.

— And has ren^ained so, one should hope, John Eglinton sedately
said. One can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his
arm.

He laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.

Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the
heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos
who suffers in us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire
upon the altar. I am the sacrificial butter.

Dunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A. E., Arval, the
Name Ineffable, in heaven hight, K. H., their master, whose identity
is no secret to adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always
watching to see if they can help. The Christ with the bridcsistcr,
moisture of light, born of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia,
departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is not for ordinary
person. O. P. must work off bad karma first. Mrs. Cooper Oakley
once glimpsed our very illustrious sister H. P. B’s elemental.

O, fie! Out on’t! Pjuiteujell You naughtn’t to look, missus, so
you naughtn’t when a lady’s ashowing of her elemental.

Mr Best entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with
grace a notebook, new', large, clean, bright.

— That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet’s
musings about the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, in-
significant and undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato’s.

John Eglinton, frow'ning, said, waxing wroth:

— Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare
Aristotle with Plato.

— Which of the two, Stephen asked, w'ould have banished me from
his commonw'ealth?

Unsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of
allhorse. Streams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in

174

the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see.
Through spaces smaller than red globules of man s blood they creepy-
crawj after Blake’s buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable
world is but a shadow. Hold to the no\\, the here, through which all
future plunges to the p.i '.

Mr Best came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.

— Haines is gone, he said.

— Is he?

— I was showing him Jubainville’s book. He’s quite enthusiastic,
don’t you know, about Hyde’s Lovesongs of Connacht. I couldn t
bring him in to hear the discussion. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy it.

Bound thee forthy my booklety quick
To greet the callous public.

Writ, I -ween, 'fwas not my uish
In lean unlovely English.

— The peatsmoke is going to his head, John Eglinton opined.

We feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy.
Green twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.

— People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, tlic auric
egg of Russell warned occultly. The movements which work revolu-
tions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant’s
heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground
but the living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena
produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song, France produces the
finest flower of corruption in Mallarm^ but the desirable life is
revealed only to the podr of heart, the life of Homer’s Phxacians.

From these words Mr Best turned an unoffending face to Stephen.

— Mallarm^, don’t you know', he said, has written those wonderful
prose poems Stephen MacKcnna used to read to me in Paris. The
one about Hamlet. He says; il se promene, lisant au livre de lui-meme,
don’t you know, reading the book of himself. He describes Hamlet given
in a French town,don’t you know, a provincial tow’n. They advertised it.

His free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.

HAMLET

ou

LE DISTRAIT
Piece de Shakespeare

175

He rcpciitcd (ojohn Eglimon’s newgathcred frown:

— Piece Je Shakespeare^ don’t you know. It’s so French, the French
point of ^ icw. Hamlet ou . . .

— I lie absentrninded beggar, Stephen ended.

John Eglinton laughed.

— ^ es, I suppose it \\oiild be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt,
but distressingly shortsighted in sonic matters.

Sumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.

— A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Stephen said.
Not for nothing was he a butcher’s son wielding the sledded poleaxe
and spitting in his palm. Nine lives arc taken off for his father’s one.
Our Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don’t hesitate to
'lioot. I he bloodboltercd shambles in act five is a forecast of the
concentration camp sung bv Mr Swinburne.

Cranly, I his mute orderly, followitig battles from afar.

H helps and dams oj murderous Joes "whom none
But tee had spared . . .

Between the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the
deep sea.

— He will have it that Hamlet is a ghoststory, John Eglinton said
tor .Mr Best’s behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make
our flesh creep.

List! List! O list!

My flesh hears him: creeping, hears.

If thou didst ever . . .

-What is a ghosti’ Stephen said with tingling energy. One who
has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through
change of manners. Eli7abcthan London lay as far from Stratford as
corrupt Paris lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from limho
patrum, returning to the world that has forgotten him? Who is king
Hamlet?

John Eglinton shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.

Lifted.

176

— It is this hour of a day in mid June, Stephen said, begging with a
swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the
bankside. The bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden.
Canvasclimbcrs who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the
groundlings.

Local colour. Work in all you know. .Make them accomplices.

— Shakespeare has left the huguenot’s house in Silver street and
walks by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to
feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. I'hc
swan of Avon has other thoughts.

Composition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!

— The play begins. .A player comes on under the shadow, made
up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice.
It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is
Shakespeare who h.ai' studied Hamlet all the years ot his life which were
not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words
to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack
of cerecloth, calling him by a nan^e:

Hamlet, I am thyjather's spirit

bidding liim list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince,
young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who
has died in Stratford that liis namesake may live for ever.

— Is it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence,
and in the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his
ow'n words to his own son’s name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he
would have been prince Hamlet’s twin) is it possible, I w’ant to know,
or probable that he did'not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of
those premises; you are the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father:
your mother is the guilty queen. Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway?

— But this prying into the family life ot a gieat man, Russell began
impatiently.

Art thou there, truepenny?

— Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays.
I mean when we read the poetry of Kin^ Lear what is it to us how the
poet lived? As for living, our servants can do that for us, Villicrs de
rislc has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day,
the poet’s drinking, the poet’s debts. We have King Lear: and it is
immortal.

177

N

Mr Best's face appealed to, agreed.

r/ou' over them icith your u'oves and with your waters, Mananaan,
Mananaan Machir

How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry.^
Marry, I wanted it.

I'akc thou this noble.

Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson’s bed, clergyman’s
daughter. Agenbite of inwit.

Do you intend to pay it back.^

0, yes.

When? Now?

Well . . . no.

When, then?

I paid my way. I paid my way.

Steady on. He’s from beyant Boyne Water. The northeast corner.
You owe it.

Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now.
Other I got pound.

Buzz. Buzz.

But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under
cverchanging forms.

I that sinned and prayed and fasted.

A child Conmee saved from pandies.

1, I and I. I.

A. E. I. O. U.

— Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries?
John Eglinton’s carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid
for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born.

— She died, Stephen retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born.
She saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces.
She bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his
eyelids closed when he lay on his deathbed.

Mother’s deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me
into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers.
Liliata rutilantium.

I wept alone.

John Eglinton looked in the tangled glow'worm of his lamp.

178

— The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said,
and got out of it as quickly and as best he could.

— Bosh! Stephen said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes.
His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Portals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, soft-
creakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous.

— A shrew, John Eglinton said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of
discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates
learn from Xanthippe.^

— Dialectic, Stephen answered: and Irorn his mother how to bring
thoughts into the world. What he learnt front his other wife .Myrto
[absit nomen!) Socratididion’s Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman,
will ever know. But neither the midwife’s lore nor the caudlcctures
saved him from the archons of Sinn Fein and their noggin of hemlock.

— But Ann Hathaway? Mr Best’s quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes,
we seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.

His look went from brooder’s beard to carper’s skull, to remind, to
chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless
though maligned.

— He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant
memory. He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Rome-
ville whistling The girl I lejt behind me. If the earthquake did not lime
it we should know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the
cry of hounds, the studded bridle and her blue windows. That
memory, Venus and Adonis ^ lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-
lovc in London. Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls
her young and beautiful. Do you think the writer of Antony and
Cleopatroy a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head
that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie withal? Good;
he left her and gained the world of men. But his boywomen arc the
women of a boy. Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males.
He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their
will Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comeiher
on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over
the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is
a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger
than herself.

And my turn? When?

Come!

179

— Rycficld, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book,
gladiv brightly.

rte murmured then with blonde delight for all:

Beticeen the acres oj the rye
These pretty countryjoik •would He.

Paris: the wellpleased pleaser.

A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled
its cooperative watch.

— I am afraid I am due at the Homestead.

Whither away? Exploitable ground.

— Are you going, John Eglinton’s active eyebrows asked. Shall we
see you at Moore’s tonight? Piper is coming.

— Piper! Mr Best piped. Is Piper back?

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.

— I don’t know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I
can get away in time.

Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. Isis Unveiled. Their Pali
book we tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrcl umbershoot he
thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul,
mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chela-
ship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin.
Lotus ladies tend them i’the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled
with his god he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls,
engulfer. Hcsouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing
crcecries, whirled, whirling, they bew’ail.

In quintessential triviality

For years in this Jleshcase a shesoul dwelt.

— They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian
said, friendly and earnest. Mr Russel], rumour has it, is gathering
together a sheaf of our younger poets’ verses. We are all looking
forward anxiously.

Anxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces,
lighted, shone.

See this. Remember.

Stephen looked dowm on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his

i8o

ashplanthandlc over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly
With two index fingers. .Aristotle’s experiment. One or two? Ncccs-
siiv is that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise.
Argal, one h.it is one hat.

Listen.

Young Colum and Starkey. George Roberts is doing the commer-
cial part. Longworth will give it a good purt in the Express. O, will
he? I liked Colum’s Drovfr. Yes, I think he has that queer thing,
genius. Do you think he has genius really? Yeats admired his line;
Ai in viild earth a Grecian vase. Did he? I hope you’ll be able to come
to-night. Malachi .Mulligan is coming too. .Moore asked him to
bring Haines. Did you hear Miss Mitchell’s joke about Moore and
Martyn? That .Moore is Martyn’s wild oats? Awfully clever, isn't it?
rhey remind one of don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our national
epic has yet to be written. Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man for it.
.A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron
kilt? O’Neill Russell? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue.
And his Dulcinea? James Stephens is doing some clever sketches. We
are becoming important, it seems.

Cordelia. CordogUo. Lir’s loneliest daughter.

Nookshotten. Now- your best French polish.

— Thank you very much, Mr Russell, Stephen said, rising. If you
will be so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman

— O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so
■much correspondence.

— I understand, Stephen said. Thanks.

God ild you. The pigs’ paper. Bullockbefriending.

— Synge has promised me an article for Dana too. Are we going
to be read* I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in
Irish. I hope you will come round tonight. Bring Starkey.

Stephen sat down.

I'he quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing his mask
said:

— Mr Dcdalus, your views arc most illuminating.

He creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a
chopinc, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:

— Is it your view, then, that she w'as not faithtul to the poet?

•Alarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward
light?

1 8 1

— Where there is a reconciliation, Stephen said, there must have
been first a sundering.

— Yes.

Christfox m leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks
from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase.
W'omen he won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of
justices, bully tapsters’ wives. Fox and geese. And in New place a
slack dishonoured body that once w'as comely, once as sw'eet, as fresh
as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow
grave and unforgiven.

— Yes. So you think . . .

I’he door closed behind the outgoer.

Rest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and
brooding air.

A vestal’s lamp.

Here he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have
lived to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been;
possibilities of the possible as possible: things not' known: what name
Achilles bore when he lived among women.

Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice
of words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I
heard the voice of that Egyptian highpricst. In painted chambers
loaded -with tileSooks.

They arc still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch
of death is in them, to tell me in my car a maudlin talc, urge me to
wreak their will.

—Certainly, John Eglinton mused, of all great men he is the most
enigmatic. We know- nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not
even so much. Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all
the rest.

— But Hamlet is so personal, isn’t it? Mr Best pleaded. I mean, a
kind of private paper, don’t you know, of his private life. I mean I
don t care a button, don’t you know, who is killed or who is
guilty . . .

He rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his
defiance. His private papers in the original. Ta an bad ar an fir.
Taim imo shagart. Put beurla on it, Uttlejohn.

Quoth littlejohn Eglinton:

— I was prepared for paradoxes from what Malachi Mulligan told

I&2

US but I may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that
Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern task before you.

Bear with me.

Stephen withstood the bane of miscreant eyes, glinting stern under
wrinkled brows. A basilisk. £ quando vede I' uomo f attosca. Messer
Brunetto, I thank thee for the word.

— As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen
said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the
artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right
breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been
woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet
father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In thtintehse instant
of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that
which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I ntay
come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may sec myself
as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.

Drummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.

— Yes, Mr Best said youngly, I feel Hamlet quite young, The
bitterness might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are
surely from the son.

Has the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his
son.

— That mole is the last to go, Stephen said, laughing.

John Eglinton made a nothing pleasing mow.

— If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a
drug in the market. The plays of Shakespeare’s later years which
Renan admired so much breathe another spirit.

— The spirit of reconciliation, the quakcr librarian breathed.

— There can be no reconciliation, Stephen said, if there has not been
a sundering.

Said that.

— If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow
over the hell of time of King Lear^ Othelloy Hamlety Troilus and
Cressida, look to see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the
heart of a man. Shipwrecked in storms dire, T ried, like another Ulysses,
Pericles, prince of Tyre?

Head, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblindcd.

— A child, a girl placed in his arms, Marina.

— The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a

>83

con‘>tant ijiiantity, John Eglinton detected. The highroads are dreary
hut they lead to the town.

Good Bacon: gone niustv- Shakespeare Bacon s wild oats. Cypher-
jiigglcrs going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town
good masters? Mummed in names: A. E., con: Magee, John Eglinton.
East of the sun, west of the moon: Tir na n-og. Booted the tw'ain and
staved.

Hr/w many miles to Dublin?

Three score and ten, sir.

U^ill U'e be there by candlelight?

— .Mr Brandes accepts it, Stephen said, as the first play of the closing
period.

—Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Simon Lazarus, as
some aver his name is, say of it?

—Marina, Stephen said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder,
Perdita, that which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his
daughter’s child. My dearest uije, Pericles says, uas like this maid.
Will any man love the daughter if he has not loved the mother? ^

— 1 he art of being a grandfather, Mr Best gan murmur. L art
d'etre grand . . .

—His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the
standard of all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will
touch him. The images of other males of his blood will repel him. He
will see in them grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or repeat
himself.

The benign forehead of the quakcr librarian enkindled rosily with
hope.

—I hope Mr Dedalus will w-ork out his theory for the enlightenment
of the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator,
Mr George Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris.
His articles on Shakespeare in the Saturday Review were surely
brilliant. Oddly enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation w’ith
the dark lady of the sonnets. The favoured rival is William Herbert,
carl of Pembroke. I own that if the poet must be rejected, such a
rejection would seem more in harmony with — wliat shall I say? — our
notions of what ought not to have been.

Felicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk s

egg, prize of their fray.

184

He thous and thecb her \^•ith grave husband\^ord^. D<)^^ l'>' .
Miriam? Doj-t love thv man?

— That may be too, Stephen said. There is a saying ot C»octlic >
which Mr Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wisli tor in youtli
because you will get it in middle lite. W hv does he send to one who i'
a huotiaroha^ a bay where all men ride, a maid ot honour with a scandal-
ous girlhood, a lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord ot
language and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and had written
Romeo and Juliet. Why? Belief in himself has been untimely killed.
He was overborne in a cornfield first (rycficld, I should say) and he
will never be a victor in his own eyes after nor play victoriously the
game of laugh and lie down. .Assumed dongiovannism will not saw
him. No later undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk ot the
boar has wounded him there where love lies ablccding. If the shrew’ is
worsted yet there remains to her woman’s invisible weapon. There is,
I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh driving him into a new
passion, a darker shadow of the first, darkening even his own under-
standing of himself. A like fate av\aits him and the two rages com-
mingle in a whirlpool.

They list. And in the porches of their cars I pour.

— The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in
the porch of a sleeping car. But those who are done to death in sleep
cannot know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow
their souls with that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning
and the beast with two backs that urged it king Hamlet’s ghost could
not know of were he not endowed with knowledge by his creator.
That is why the speech (his lean unlovely English) is always turned
elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and ravished, what he would but would
not, go with him from Lucrccc’s bluccirclcd ivory globes to Imogen*'
breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the
creation he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an
old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in
undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or
by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow
now, the wind by Elsinore’s rocks or what you will, the sea’s voice, a
voice heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow ,
the son consubstantial with the father.

— Amenl responded from the doorway.

Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?

185

A ril^.ild face, sullvn as a dean’s, Buck Mulligan catne forwards
then blithe in inotlcv, tovNards tlic greeting of their smiles. My
telegram.

— ^'ou were speakitig ot the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he
asked ot Stephen.

l^ritnroscvestcd he greeted gaily vvith his defied Panama as with a
bauble.

1 Ik’V make lum welcome, li as Da verlachst wirst Du noch diene rr,

4

Brt>nd ot inockers; Photius, pscudoinalachi, Johann \lost.

1 Ic \\ ho Hiins.clt begot, niiddler the Holy Ghost, and Himself sent
hiinj.elt, Agenhuver, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by
Mis fiends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor,
starved on crosstrcc. Who let film bury, stood up, harrowed hell,

GLO— O— RI— A IN EX — CEL — SIS DE — O.

tared into heaven and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on
cite right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day
to doom the quick and dead when all the quick shall be dead already.

He lifts hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells
aquiring.

— Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive dis-
cussion Mr Alulligan, I’ll be bound, has his theory too of the play
and of Sliakespeare. All sides of life should be represented.

He snnlcd on all sides equally.

Buck Mulligan thought, puzzled;

— Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know’ the name.

A flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.

— To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes
like Synge.

Mr Best turned to him:

— Haines missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He’ll see you

i86

after at the D. B. C. He’s gone to Gill’s to buy Hvdc’> Lovesongs oj
Connacht.

— I came through the museum. Buck Mulligan said. Was he here?

— The bard’s fellowcountrymen, John Eglinton answered, are rather
tired perhaps of our brilliancies ot theorising. I hear that an actress
played Hamlet for the fourhundrcdandeiglith time last night in
Dublin. Vining held that the prince was a w oman. Has no-one made
him out to be an Irishman? judge Barton, I believe, is searching for
some clues. He swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint
Patrick.

— The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde’s, Mr Best said,
lifting his brilliant notebook. That Portrait of Mr J!'. H. where he
proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Hughes, a man all
hues.

— For Willie Hughes, is it not? the quakcr librarian asked.

Or Hughic Wills. .Mr William Himself. W. H.: who am I?

— I mean, for Willie Hughes, .Mr Best said, amending his gloss
easily. Of course it’s all paradox, don’t you know, Hughes and hews
and hues the colour, but it’s so typical the w'ay he w^orks it out. It’s
the very essence of Wilde, don’t you know. The light touch.

His glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe.
T ame essence of Wilde.

You’re darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with
Dan Deasy’s ducats.

How much did I spend? O, a few- shillings.

For a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.

Wit. You would give your five wits for youth’s proud livery he
pranks in. Lineaments of gratified desire.

There be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a
cool ruttinte send them. Yea, turtledove her.

Eve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in’s kiss.

— Do you think it is only a paradox, the quaker librarian was
asking. The mocker is never taken seriously w’hen he is most serious.

They talked seriously of mocker’s seriousness.

Buck Mulligan’s again heavy face eyed Stephen awhile. Then, his
head wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket.
His mobile lips read, smiling with new delight.

— Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal
bull!

i )c ^at on a ci^rncr ut the unlit dosk> reading aloud joyfully:

— T/w Si'ntimcntalist is he 'nho uould enjoy 'without incurring the
immense Jehtnrshif> for a thing done. Signed: Dedalus. Where did
you launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk
the tour quid? The aunt is going to call on vour unsubstantial father,
'lelegr.un! Malachi Mulligan, the Ship, lower .Abbey street. O, you
peerless mummer! (.), you pricstified kinchite!

Joyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened
in querulous brogue:

— It’s w hat I’m telling, vou, mister honey, it’s queer and sick we were,
Haines and mvself, the time himself brought it in. ’Twas murmur
vve did for a galkis potion would rouse a friar. I’m thinking, and he
limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in
Connery’s sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.

1 le wailed !

— .And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending
us your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard
long like the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful.

Stephen laughed.

Quickly, vvarningfully Buck Mulligan bent down:

— The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you.
He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthulc. He’s out in pam-
pooties to murder you.

— Mel Stephen exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.

Buck Mulligan gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eaves-
dropping ceiling.

— Murder you! he laughed.

Harsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash
of liglus in rue Saint-Andr^-des-Arts. In words of words for words,
p.Tlabras. Oisin with Patrick. Faunman he met in Clamart woods,
brandishing a winebottle. C'est vendredi saint! Murthering Irish.
His image, wandering, he met- I mine. I met a fool i’ the forest.

— Mr Lyster, an attendant said from the door ajar.

' — . . . in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden
in liis Diary oj Master IViUiam Silence has found the hunting terms . . .
Yes? What is it?

— There’s a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward
and offering a card. From the Freeman. He wants to sec the files of
the Kilkenny People for last year.

188

—Certainly, certainly, certainly. li' tlie gcntlcinanr . . .

He look the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down, unglanced,
looked, asked, creaked, asked:

— Is he? . . . O, there!

Brisk in a galliard he was- old and out. In the daylit corridor he
talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, mo^t lair, most
kind, most honest broadbrim.

This gentleman? Freeman s yournalf^ Kilkenny People? To be

sure. Good day, sir. Kilkenny . . . We have certainly . . .

A patient silhouette waited, listening.

— All the leading provincial . . . Sorthern If hig^ Cork Exiiminery

Enniscorthy Guardian, 1903 • Will you please? . . . Evans,

conduct this gentleman ... If you just follow the atten ... Or
please allow me . . . Thisw’ay . . . Please, sir . . .

Voluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a
bowing dark figure following his hasty heels.

The door closed.

— The sheeny! Buck Mulligan cried.

He jumped up and snatched the card.

—What’s his name? Ikey Moses? Bloom.

He rattled on.

—Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in
the museum when I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek
mouth that has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do
homage to her. Uje oj itje, thy Ups enkindle.

Suddenly he turned to Stephen:

—He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is
Greeker than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her
mesial groove. Venus Kallipygc. O, the thunder of those lions! ihe

god pursuing the maiden hid. , . , » . r> •

—We want to hear more, John Eglinton decided with Mr Best s

approval. We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had
thought of her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.

— Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Stephen said, took the palm ot
beauty from Kyrios Menelaus’ brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden
marc of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handc it to poor
Penelope. Twenty years he lived in London and, during
time, he drew a salary equal to that of the lord chancellor of Iceland.
His life was rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism, as Walt

189

Whitman called it, is the art ot surfeit. Hot hcrringpics, green mugs
of sack, honcysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons,
ringocandies. Sir Walter Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half
a million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays. The
gombeen woman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her
ot Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love and
its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures. You
know Manningham’s story of the burgher’s wife who bade Dick
Burbage to her bed after she had seen hinj in Richard III and how
Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the
COW’ by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate,
answered from the capon’s blankets; William the conqueror came bejore
Richard III. And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O,
and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is
suited for a player, and the punks of the banksidc, a penny a time,

Cours-la-Rcine. Encore vingt sous. Nous Jerons de petites cochon^
neries. Minette? Tu Deux?

— The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of Oxford’s
mother with her cup of canary for every cockcanary.

Buck Mulligan, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:

— Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!

— And Harry of six wives’ daughter and other lady friends from
neighbour scats, as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all
those twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford
was doing behind the diamond pancs^

Do and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter Lane of Gerard,
herbalist, he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins.
Lids of Juno’s eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do.
But do. Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.

Buck Mulligan rapped John EgUnton’s desk sharply.

— Whom do you suspect? he challenged.

— Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned
twice spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his
dcarmylovc.

Love that dare not speak its name.

— As an Englishman, you mean, John sturdy Eglinton put in, he
loved a lord.

Old wall where sudden lizards dash. At Charenton I watched them.

— It seems so, Stephen said, when he wants to do for him, and for

190

all other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does
for the stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwite to mother as
he had a shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a
bedvow. Two deeds are rank in that ghost’s mind: a broken vow and
the dullbrained yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased
husband’s brother. Sweet Ann I take it, was hot in the blood. Once
a wooer twice a wooer.

Stephen turned boldly in his chair.

— The burden of proof is w’ith you not with me, he said, frowning.
If you deny that in the fifth scene of Hamlet he has branded her with
infamy, tell me w'hy there is no mention of lier during the thirtyfour
years between the day she married him and the day she buried him.
All those women saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman
John, Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he went and died on her,
raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her
husband and all her sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan’s
daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy’s words, wed her second,
having killed her first.

O yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in
royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her
father’s shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too
wherein he has commended her to posterity.

He faced their silence.

To whom thus Eglinton:

You mean the will.

That has been explained, I believe, by jurists.
She was entitled to her widow’s dower
At common law. His legal knowledge was great
Our judges tell us.

Him Satan fleers,

Mocker:

And therefore he left out her name
From the first draft but he did not leave out
The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
And in London. And therefore when he was urged.
As I believe, to name her
He left her his

Second best
Bed.

Pttnkl

Lcftherhis

Secondbc'-t

Bestabed

Secabest

Leftabed.

Woa !

— Pretty countryfolk had few chattels then, John Eglinton observed,
.IS they have still if our peasant plays are true to type.

— He was a rich countrygentleman, Stephen said, with a coat of
arms and landed estate at Stratford and a house in Ireland yard, a
capitalist shareholder, a bill promoter, a tithefarmer. Why did he not
Ic.ive her his best bed if he wished her to snore away the rest of her
nights in peace?

— It is clear that there were two beds, a best and a secondbest, Mr
Secondbest Best said finely.

— Separatio a mensa ft a thalamo, bettered Buck Mulligan and was
smiled on.

— Antiquity mentions famous beds, Second Eglinton puckered,
bedsmiling. Let me think.

— Antiquity mentions that Stagyritc schoolurchin and bald heathen
sage, Stephen said, who when dying in exile frees and endows his
slaves, pays tribute to his ciders, wills to be laid in earth near the bones
of his dead wife and bids his friends be kind to an old mistress (don’t
forget Nell Gwynn Herpyllis) and let her live in his villa.

— Do you mean he died so? Mr Best asked w'ith slight concern. I
mean . . .

— He died dead drunk. Buck Mulligan capped. A quart of ale is a
dish for a king. O, I must tell you what Dowden said!

— What? asked Bcsteglinton.

William Shakespeare and company, limited. The people’s William.
For terms apply: E. Dowden, Highfield house . . .

— Lovely! Buck Mulligan suspired amorously. I asked him what
he thought of the charge of pederasty brought against the bard. He
lifted his hands and said: we can say is that lije ran very high in

those days. Lovely!

192

Catamite.

— The sense of beauty leads us astray, said beautifulinsadncss Best
to ugling Eglinton.

Steadfast John replied severe:

— The doctor can tell us what those words mean. You cannot cat
vour cake and have it.

Saycst thou so? Will they wrest from us, from fwc the pahii of

4

— And the sense of property, Steplicn said. He drew Shylock out
of Ids own long pocket. The son of a maltjobber and moneylender he
was himself a cornjobber and moneylender with ten tods of corn
hoarded in the famine riots. His borrowers are no doubt those divers
of worship mentioned by Chcttlc FalstafT who reported his uprightness
of dealing. He sued a fellowplayer for the price of a few bags of malt
and exacted his pound of flesh in interest for every money lent. How
else could Aubrey’s ostler and callboy get rich quick? .^^ll events
brought grist to his ntill. Shylock chintes with the jcwbaitlng that
followed the hanging and quartering of the queen’s leech Lopez, his
Jew’s heart being plucked forth while the sheeny was yet alive: Himlet
and Macbeth with the coming to the throne of a Scotch philosophaster
with a turn for w'itchroasting. 'I'he lost armada is his jeer in Lovers
labour Lost, His pageants, the histories, sail fullbellicd on a tide of
Mafeking enthusiasm. Warwickshire Jesuits arc tried and we have a
porter’s theory of equivocation. The Sea Venture comes home from
Bermudas and the play Renan admired is written with Patsy Caliban,
our American cousin. The sugared sonnets follow Sidney’s. As for
fay Elizabeth, otherwise carroty Bess, the gross virgin who inspired
The Merry Wives of Windsor^ let some meinherr from Almany
grope his life long for deephid meanings in the depth of the buck-
basket.

I think you’re getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of
ihcolologicophilolological. Mingo, minxi, mictum, mingere,

— Prove that he was a jew, John Eglinton dared, expectantly. Your
dean of studies holds he was a holy Roman.

Suffiaminandus sum.

— He was made in Germany, Stephen replied, as the champion
French polisher of Italian scandals.

—A myriadminded man, Mr Best reminded. Coleridge called him
myriadminded.

>93

o

Ampilus. In societate Humana hoc est maxime necessarium ut sit
amicitia inter muitos.

— Saint Thomas, Stcplicn began . . .

— Ora pro nobis^ Monk Mulligan groaned, sinking to a chair.

There he keened a wailing rune.

— Pogue mahone! Acushla machreel It’s destroyed we arc from this
day ! It’s destroyed we are surely!

All smiled their smiles.

— Saint Thomas, Stephen, smiling, said, whose gorbellied works I
enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint
diifcrcnt from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of,
likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He
means that the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld
from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom
Christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most given to inter-
marriage. Accusations are made in anger. The Christian laws which
built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm
was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel. Whether
these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday Icct.
But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what
he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over
her whom he calls his wife. No sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox
or his wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.

— Or his jennyass, Buck Mulligan antiphoned.

— Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Best said gently.

— Which Will? gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We arc getting
mixed.

•—The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann,
Will’s widow’, is the will to die.

— "Requiescatl Stephen prayed.

What oj all the will to do?

It has vanished long ago . . .

— She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the
mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as
rare as a motor car is now and that its carvings were the wonder of
seven parishes. In old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed at
New Place and drank a quart of sack the town paid for but in which

194

bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or
had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the Merry If ires and,
loosing her nightly waters on the Jordan, she thought over Hooks and
Eyesjor Believers' Breeches and The most Spiritual Snu^box to Make the
Most Devout Souls Sneeze. Venus had twisted her lips in praver.
Agcnbile of inwit: remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted
whoredom groping for its god.

— History show’s that to be true, inquit E^iintonus Chronolologos. The
ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a
man’s worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. 1
feel that Russell is right. What do we care for his v^'ife and father?
I should say that only family poets have family lives. Falstatf \v.i^
not a family man. I feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation.

Lean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy
supping with the godless, he sneaks the cup. .A sire in Ultonian Antrim
bade it him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there’s
a gentleman to sec you. Me? Says he’s your father, sir. Give me my
Wordsworth. Enter Magee .Mor .Matthew, a rugged rough rughcaded
kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired
with dauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.

Your own? He know's your old fellow. The widower.

Hurrying to her squalid dcathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I
touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny
is attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know' me.

—A father, Stephen said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary
evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father’s death.
If you hold that he, a greying man with tw'O marriageable daughters,
with thirtyfivc years of life, net mezzo del cammin di nostra vita^ with
fifty of experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg
then you must hold that his scventyycar old mother is the lustful
queen. No. The corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the night.
From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood,
having devised that mystical estate upon his son. Boccaccio s Calan-
drino was the first and last man who felt himself with child. Father-
hood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a
mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only
begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning
Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and
founded irremovably because founded, like the w’orld, macro- and

*95

tr.)croco'-m. upon the void. L pon incertitude, upon unlikelihood.
Am'>r rniitr/s, b^ubjcctivc and objective genitive, may be the only true
tiling in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of
iinv '•on that .;nv S'On should love him or he any son?

\\ hat the hell .ire you driving at.'

1 kno\\. bh'.it up. Blavt vou! I have reasons.

.'Implius. AJhui. Jlcrum. Postca.

.Arc you condemned to do this?

— T hey arc sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal
.annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly
rccortl its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, Icsbic
sisters, love- that dare not speak their name, nephews with grand-
mothers, jailbirds witli keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son
unborn mars beauty: born, he brings pain, divides affection, increases
care. He is a male: his growth is his father’s decline, his youth his
father’s envy, his friend his father’s enemy.

In rue Monsicur-Ic-Prince I thought it.

— VMiat links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.

Am I father? If I were?

Shrunken uncertain hand.

— Sabellius, the .African, subtlest hcresiarch of all the beasts of the
field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of
Aquin, \^'ith whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if
the father who has not a son be not a father can the son w’ho has not a
father be a son? W^hen Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespcare or
another poet of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet
he was not the father of his own son merely but, being no more a son,
he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own
grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same
token, never was born for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors
perfection.

Eglintoneyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly
glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.

Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.

—Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am
big with child. I have an unborn child in my brain, Pallas Athenal
A play! The play’s the thingl Let me parturiatcl

He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.

— As for his family, Stephen said, his mother’s name lives in the

196

forest of Arden. Her deatli brought from him the :>ccnc with
Volumnia in Coriolanus. His boyson’s death is the deathscenc of young
Arthur in King John. Jflamlct, the black prince, is Hamnct Shakes-
peare. Who the girls in The Tempest, in Pene/es, in Jf'inier's Tale are
we know. Who Cleopatra, deOipot of Egypt, and Cressid and \^enu»
are we may guess. But there is another member of his family who is
recorded.

— The plot thickens, John Egiinton said.

The quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake,
with haste, quake, quack.

Door closed. Cell. Day.

They list. Three. They.

I you he they.

Come, mass.

Stephen

He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Richard. Gilbert in his
old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maistcr
Gatherer one time mass he did and he seen his brud Maistcr Wull
the playwriter up in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on’s
back. The playhouse sausage filled Gilbert’s soul. He is nowhere;
but an Edmund and a Richard arc recorded in the works of sweet
William.

Mageeglinjohn

Names! What’s in a name?

Best

That is my name, Richard, don’t you know. I hope you are going
to say a good word for Richard, don’t you know, for my sake.

{Laughter. )

Buck Mulligan

{Piano, diminuendo.')

Then outspoke medical Dick
To his comrade medical Davy . . .

Stephen

In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, lago, Richard
Crookback, Edmund in King Lear, two bear the wicked uncles’ names.
Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother
Edmund lay dying in Southwark.

197

Best

I hope Edmund is going to catch it.
name . . .

I don’t want Richard, my
{Laughter.)

Quakerlyster

{A tempo.) But he that filches from me my good name . . .

Stephen

{Stringendo.) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William,
in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his
face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets
\s here there is Will in overplus.* Like John O’Gaunt his name is dear
tM ium, as dear as the coat of arms he toadied for, on a bend sable a
<['car or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his
glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What’s in a name? Thar
IS what wc ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we
are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake rose at his birth. It shone
by day in the heavens alone, brighter than V'envis in the night, and by
night it shone over delta iniCassiopcia,-the recumbent constellation
w hich is the signature of his initial among the stars. His eyes watched
it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he walked by the
vhimberous summer fields at midnight, returning from Shottery and
from her arms.

Both satisfied. I too.

Don’t tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.

And from her arms.

Wait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo vou.^

Read the skies. Autontimerumenos. Boas Utephanoumenos. Where’s
your configuration? Stephen, Stephen, cut the bread even. S. D:
sua donna. Gid: di lu't. Gelindo risolve di non amar S. D.

— What is that, Mr Dcdalus? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a
celestial phenomenon?

— A star by night, Stephen said, a pillar of the cloud by day.

What more’s to speak.^

Stephen looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.

Stephanos^ my crown. My sword. His boots arc spoiling the shape
of my feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.

— You make good use of the name, John Eglinton allowed. Your

198

own name is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical
liumour.

iMe, .Magee and Mulligan.

Fabulous artificer, the hawklike man. You rtesv. Whereto? New-
haven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus.
Pater, ait. Seabedabblcd, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you arc.
Lapwing he.

jVIr Best eagcrquietly lifted his book to say:

— That’s very interesting because tliat brother motive, don’t you
know, we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The
three brothers Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don’t you know’, the
fairytales. The third brother that marries the sleeping beauty and
wins the best prize.

Best of Best brothers. Good, better, best.

The quakcr librarian springhalted near.

— I should like to know, he said, which brother you ... I
understand you to suggest there w-as misconduct with one of the
brothers . . . But perhaps I am anticipating?

He caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.

An attendant from the doorway called;

— \lr Lyster! Father Dincen wants . . .

— O! Father Dincen! Directly.

Swiftly rectly creaking rcctly rcctly he was rcctly gone.

John Eglinton touched the foil.

— Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and
Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn’t you?

— In asking you to' remember those two noble kinsmen nunclc
Richie and nuncle Edmund, Stephen answ’cred, I feel I am asking too
much perhaps. A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.

Lapwing.

Where is your brother? Apothecaries’ hall. My whetstone. Him,
then Cranly, Mulligan; now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act
speech. They mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.

Lapwing.

I am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.
On.

— You will say those names were already in the chronicles from
which he took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather
than others? Richard, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes

199

lo\i' to a widowed Ann hat’s in a namc?^, woos and wins her, a
whoreson merry widow. Riiliard the conqueror, third brother, came
.liter William the conquered. The other four act?- of that play hang
limply from that first. <’>f all his kings Richard is the only king un-
shielded by Shakespeare’s reserence, the angel of the world. Why is
the underplot of King I.cur in which Eidmund figures lifted out of
Sidney’s Arcadia and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend oldet than
history.^

— That was Will’s way, John Eglinton defended. We should not
now combine a Norse saga with an excerpt fron^ a novel by George
Meredith. Que voulcz-rousY Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on
the scacnast and makes Ulysses quote .Aristotle.

— \N hv? Stephen answered himself. Because the theme of the false
or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to
Shakespeare, what the poor is not, always with him. The note of
banishment, banishment from the heart, banishment from home,
sounds uninterruptedly from The Tivo Gentlemen oj Verona onward
till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth and
drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects
itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe.
It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married
daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it
was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his
will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words arc those
of my lords bishops of Maynooth: an original sin and, like original
sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between
the lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under
winch her four bones arc not to be laid. Age has not withered it.
Beauty and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite variety
everywhere in the world he has created, in Much Ado about Nothings
twice in As you like Ity in The Tempesty in Hamlet, in Measure Jor
Measure, and in all the other plays which I have not read.

He laughed to free his mind from his mind’s bondage.

Judge Eglinton summed up.

— The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince.
He is all in all.

— He is, Stephen said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act
five. All in all. In Cymieline, in Othello he is bawd and cuckold. He
acts and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jos^ he

200

kills the real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad lago
ceaselessly willing that the moor in him shall suffer.

— Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Mulligan clucked lewdly. O word ot
fear!

Dark dome received, reverbed.

— And what a character is lagol undaunted John Eglinton ex-
claimed. When all is said Dumas jilt (or is it Dumas phe?) is right.
After God Shakespeare has created most.

— Man delights him not nor woman neither, Stephen said. Me
returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born,
where he has always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his
^ journey of life ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then
dies. The motion is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet pere and
Hamlet Jilt. A king and a prince at last in death, with incidental music.
And, what though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender
hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband
from whom they refuse to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look
long on it: prosperous Prosper©, the good man rewarded, Lizzie,
grandpa’s lump of love, and nuncle Richie, the bad man taken off' by
poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain.
He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within
as possible. Maeterlinck says; IJ Socrates leave hit house today he 'will
find the sage seated on his doorstep. Ij judas go jorth tonight it is to
Judas his steps will tend. Every hfe is many days, day after day. We
walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men,
young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting
ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote
it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord ot
things as they arc whom the most Roman of catholics call dio bohiy
hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and
would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven,
foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an
androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.

— Eureka! Buck Mulligan cried. Eureka!

Suddenly happied be jumped up and reached in a stride John
Eglinton’s desk.

— May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Malachi.

He began to scribble on a slip of paper.

Take some slips from the counter going out.

201

— Those \Nho are married, Mr Best, douce herald, said, all save one,
shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.

He laughed, unmarried, at Eglinton Johannes, of arts a bachelor.

Unwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each
his variorum edition of The Taming oj the Shreu\

— You are a delusion, said roundly John Eglinton to Stephen. You
have brought us all this way to show us a Frencli triangle. Do you
believe your own theory?

— No, Stephen said promptly.

— Arc you going to write it? Mr Best asked. You ought to make it a
dialogue, don’t you know, like the Platonic dialogues VVildc wrote.

John Eclecticon doubly smiled.

— Well, in that case, he said, I don’t see why you should expect
payment for it since you don’t believe it yourself. Dowden believes
there is some mystery in Hamlet but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu,
the man Piper met in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory,
believes that the secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is
going to visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his
ancestor wTOte the plays. It will come as a surprise to his grace. But
he believes his theory.

I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe
or help me to unbelievc? Who helps to believe? Egomen, Who to
unbelieve? Other chap.

— You are the only contributor to Dana who asks for pieces of silver.
Then I don’t know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space
for an article on economics.

Fraidrinc. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over.
Economics.

— For a guinea, Stephen said, you can publish this inter view.

Buck Mulligan stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing:
and then gravely said, honeying malice;

— I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper
Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the Summa
contra Gentiles in the company of two gonorrheal ladies. Fresh Nelly
and Rosalie, the coalquay whore.

He broke away.

— Come, Kinch. Come, wandering iEngus of the birds.

Come, Kinch, you have eaten all we left. Ay, I will serve you your
orts and ofFals.

202

Stephen rose.

Life is many days. This will end.

— We shall see you tonight, John Eglinton said. Notre ami Moore
says Malachi Mulligan must be there.

Buck Mulligan flaunted his slip and panama.

— Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth
of Ireland. I’ll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can
you walk straight?

Laughing he . . .

Swill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.

Lubber . . .

Stephen followed a lubber . . .

One day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After
his lub back I followed. I gall his kibe.

Stephen, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a well-
kempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering
daylight of no thoughts.

What have I learned? Of them? Of me?

Walk like Haines now.

The constant readers’ room. In the readers’ book Cashel Boyle
O’Connor Fiizmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item:
was Hamlet mad? The quaker’s pate godlily with a priesteen in
booktalk.

— O please do, sir ... I shall be most pleased . . .

Amused Buck Mulligan mused in pleasant murmur with himself,
selfnodding:

— A pleased bottom.

The turnstile.

Is that? . . . Blueribboncd hat . . . Idly writing . . . What?
Looked? . . .

The curving balustrade; smoothsliding Mincius.

Puck Mulligan, panamahelmeted, went step by step, lambing,
trolling:

John Eglintoriy my jo, John.

IV hy won't you wed a wije?

He sputtered to the air:

— O, the chinless Chinamanl Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went
over to their playbox, Haines and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players

203

are creating a new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck.
Abbey theatre! I smell the public sweat of monks.

He spat blank.

Forgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave
him. And left the femme de trente ans. And why no other children
born? And his first child a girl?

Afterwit. Go back.

I'he dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce young-
ling, minion of pleasure, Phedo’s toyable fair hair.

Eh . . . I just eh . . . wanted ... I forgot . . . he . . .

— Longworth and M‘Curdy Atkinson were there . . .

Puck Mulligan footed fcatly, trilling:

I hardly hear the purlieu cry
Or a Tommy talk as I pass one by
Before my thoughts begin to run
On F. M'Curdy Atkinson,

The same that had the wooden leg
And that filibustering fillibeg
That never dared to slake his drouth,

Magee that had the chinless mouth.

Being afraid to marry on earth

They masturbated for all they were worth.

Jest on. Know thyself.

Halted below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.

— Mournful mummer. Buck Mulligan moaned. Synge has left off
wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal
are black.

A laugh tripped over his lips.

— Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about
that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jew jesuitl She
gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to
Jaysus. Couldn’t you do the Yeats touch?

He went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful
arms:

— The most beautiful book that has cime out of our country in my
time. One thinks of Homer.

He stopped at the stairfoot.

204

-~I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.

The pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men s

inorrice with caps of indices.

In sweetly varying voices Buck Mulligan read his tablet:

Everyman His Chen IViJe
or

A Honeymoon in the Hand
{a national immorality in three orgasms)

by

Ballocky Mulligan

He turned a happy patch’s smirk to Stephen, saying:

— The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.

He read, marcato:

— Characters:

Toby Tostoff (a ruined Pole).

Crab (a bushranger).

Medical Dick '|

and ■ (two birds with one stone).

Medical Davy J

Mother Grogan (a watercarrier).

Fresh Nelly
and

Rosalie (thc.coalquay whore).

He laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by
Stephen: and mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:

— O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin
had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberry-
coloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!

— The most innocent son of Erin, Stephen said, for whom they ever
lifted them.

About to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood
aside.

Part. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave h^
house today, if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which
I in time must come to, ineluctably.

205

My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.

A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.

— Good dav again, Buck Mulligan said.

The portico.

Here I watched the birds for augury, i^ingus of the birds. They go,
they come. Last night I Hew. Easily Hew. Men wondered. Street of
harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.

— The wandering jew, Buck Mulligan whispered with clown’s
awe. Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I
fear thee, ancient mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a
breechpad.

•Manner of Oxenford.

Day. Wheelbarrow' sun over arch of bridge.

A dark back went before them. Step of a pard, down, out by the
gateway, under portcullis barbs.

They followed.

Offend me still. Speak on.

Kind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds.
Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and
in a flaw’ of softness softly were blown.

Cease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline, hicro-
phantic: from wHde earth an altar.

Laud ue the gods

And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our bless' d altars.

★ The superior, the very reverend John conmee s. j., reset
his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came dow’n the
presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time to w'alk to Artane.
What was that boy’s name again? Dignam, yes. Vere dignum et
justum est. Brother Sw'an was the person to sec. Mr Cunningham’s
letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good practical catholic: useful
at mission time.

A oneleggcd sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his
crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of
the sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for alms tow’ards the

206

very reverend John Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the
sun for his purse held, he knew, one silver crown.

Father Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not
for long, of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by
cannonballs, ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal
Wolsey’s words; IJ I had served my God as 1 had served my king He
iDOuld not have abandoned me in my old days. He walked by the tree-
shade of sunnywinking leaves and towards him came the wife of Mr
David Sheehy M. P.

— Very well, indeed, father. And you father?

Father Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to
Buxton probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on
well at Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed
to hear that. And Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house
was still sitting, to be sure it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful
indeed. Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan
would come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonder-
ful man really.

Father Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy
M.P. looking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David
Sheehy M. P. Yes, he would certainly call.

— Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.

Father Conmee doffed his silk hat, as he took leave, at the jet beads
of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again in going.
He had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.

Father Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on
Father Bernard Vaughan’s droll eyes and cockney voice.

— Pilate! Wy don’t you old back that owlin mob?

A zealous man, howxvcr. Really he was. And really did great
good in his way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he
loved the Irish. Of good family too would one think it? Welsh, were
they not?

0, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial.

Father Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of
Mountjoy square. Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house;
Aha. And were they good boys at school? O. That was very good
now. And what was his name? Jack Sohan. And his name? Ger.
Gallahcr, And the other little man? His name was Brunny Lynam.
O, that was a very nice name to have.

207

Father Conmcc gave a letter from his breast to master Bninny
Lynam and pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon
street.

— But mind you don’t post yourself into the box, little man, he
said.

The boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed.

— O, sir.

— Well, let me sec if you can post a letter. Father Conmee said.

Master Brunny Lynam ran across the road and pul Father Conmcc’s
letter to father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox,
Father Conmee smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along
Mountjoy square cast.

Mr Denis J. Maginni, professor of dancing, &c,, in silk hat, slate
frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender trousers,
canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking with grave deport-
ment most respectfully took the curbstone as he passed lady Maxwell
at the corner of Dignam’s court.

Was that not Mrs M'Guinncss?

Mrs M'Guinncss, stately, silverhaired, bowed to FatherConmee from
the farther footpath along which she sailed. And Father Conmcc
smiled and saluted. How did she do.’

A fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something.
And to think that she was a pawnbroker. Well, nowl Such a . . .
what should he say? . . . such a queenly mien.

Father Conmcc walked down Great Charles Street and glanced at
the shutup free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Green B. A.
will (D. V.) speak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it
incumbent on him to say a few words. But one should be charitable.
Invincible ignorance. They acted according to their lights.

Father Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North
Circular road. It was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such
an important thoroughfare. Surely, there ought to be.

A band of satchellcd schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All
raised untidy caps. Father Conmcc greeted them more than once
benignly. Christian brother boys.

Father Conmee smelled incense on his right hand as he walked.
Saint Joseph’s church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females.
Father Conmcc raised his hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but
occasionally they were also badtempered.

208

Near Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift
nobleman. And now it was an office or something.

Father Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and w'as
saluted by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his
shop. Father Conmee saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived
the odours that came from baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He
passed Grogan’s the tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and
told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York. In America those things
were continually happening. Unfortunate people to die like that,
unprepared. StiJl, an act of perfect contrition.

Father Conmee went by Daniel Bergin’s publichouse against the
window of which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him
and were saluted.

Father Conmee passed H. J. O’Neill’s funeral establishment where
Corny Kcllcher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade
of hay. A constable on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father
Conmee saluted the constable. In Youkstetter’s, the porkbutchcr’s,
Father Conmee observed pig’s puddings, white and black and red,
lying neatly curled in tubes.

Moored under the trees of Ch'arlevillc Mall Father Conmee saw a
turfbarge, a towhorsc with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of
dirty straw seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of
poplar above him. It was idyllic: and Father Conmee reflected on the
providence of the Creator who had made turf to be in bogs where men
might dig it out and bring it to town and hamlet to make fires in the
houses of poor people.

On Newcomen bridge the very reverend John Conmee S. J. of saint
Francis Xavier’s church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an
outward bound tram.

Off an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley
C. C. of saint Agatha’s church, north William street, on to Newcomen
bridge.

At Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward
bound tram for he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past
Mud Island.

Father Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked
with care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a
sixpence and five pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm
into his purse. Passing the ivy church he reflected that the ticket

Z09 p

ins-pcctor usually made his visit when one had carelessly thrown away
the ticket. The solemnity of the occupants of the car seemed to
rather Conmcc excessive for a journey so short and cheap. Father
Conmee liked cheerful decorum.

It was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite
Father Conmee had finished explaining and looked down. His wife.
Father Conmcc supposed. .A tiny yawn opened the mouth of the
wife of the gentleman with the glasses. She raised her small gloved fist,
yawned ever so gently, tiptapping her small gloved fist on her opening
mouth and smiled tinilv, sweetly.

Father Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived also
that the awkward man at the other side of her was sitting on the edge
of the seat.

Fatlier Conmcc at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty in the
mouth of the awkward old man who had the shaky head.

.^t Anneslcy bridge the tram halted and, when it was about to go,
an old woman rose suddenly from her place to alight. The conductor
pulled the bcllstrap to stay the car for her. She passed out with her
basket and a market net: and Father Conmee saw- the conductor help
her and net and basket down: and Father Conmee thought that, as she
had nearly passed the end of the penny fare, she was one of those good
.souls who had always to be told twice SUss you, my child, that they
have been absolved, pray jor me. But they had so many worries in
life, so many cares, poor creatures.

From the hoardings .Mr Eugene Stratton grinned with thick nigger*
lips at Father Conmee.

Father Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow
men and of his sermon of saint Peter Claver S. J. and the African
mission and of the propagation of the faith and of the millions of black

. tl^at ^ta^l not received the baptism of water

when their last hour came like a thief in the night. That book by the
Belgian Jesuit, Le d^ombre des ^lus, seemed to Father Conmee a
reasonable plea. Those were millions of human souls created by God
in His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D. V.) been brought.
But they were God’s souls created by God. It seemed to Father
Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, a waste, if one might say.

At the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by
the conductor and saluted in his turn.

The Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmcc, road and

210

name. The joybells were ringing in gay \Ialahide. Lord Talbot de
Malahide, immediate hereditary lord admiral ol Malahide and the seas
adjoining. Then came the call to arms and she was maid, wife and
widow in one day. Those were oldworldish days, loyal times in joyous
townlands, old times in the barony.

Father Conmee, walking, thought of hi^ little book Old Times in
the Barony and of the book that might be written about jesuit houses
and of Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord Molcsworth, first countess of
Belvedere.

A listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough
Enncl, Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the
evening, not startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the
truth? Not the jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had
not committed adultery fully, eiaculatio seminis inter vas naturale
mulieris, with her husband’s brother? She would half confess if she
had not all sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and he,
her husband’s brother.

Father Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed
however for men’s race on earth, and of the w-ays of God which were
not our ways.

Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was
humane and honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and
he smiled at smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled
with full fruit clusters. And the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom,
noble to noble, were impalmcd by don John Conmee.

It was a charming day.

The lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages,
curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a
flock of small white clouds going slowly down the wind. Moutonner,
the French said. A homely and just word.

Father Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of mutioning
clouds over RalhcofFey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the
stubble of Clongowes field. He walked there, reading in the evening,
and heard the cries of the boys’ lines at their play, young cries in the
quiet evening. He was their rector: his reign was mild.

Father Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary
out. An ivory bookmark told him the page.

Nones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell
had come.

211

Father Conmcc read in secret Patfr and Ave and crossed his breast.
Deus in adiutorium.

He walked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading
till he came to lies in Beati immaculati: Principium verborum tuorum
Veritas: in eternum omnia indicia iustitice tua.

A flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him
came a young woman w'ith wild nodding daisies in her hand. The
young man raised his cap abruptly: the young woman abruptly bent
and with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig.

Father Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page of his
breviary. Sin: Principes persecuti sunt me gratis: et a verbis tuis
jormidavit cor meum.

★

Corny Kelleher closed his long daybook and glanced with his droop-
ing eye at a pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He pulled himself
erect, went to it and, spinning it on its axle, viewed its shape and brass
furnishings. Chewing his blade of hay he laid the coffinlid by and
came to the doorway. There he tilted his hatbrim to give shade to his
eyes and leaned against the doorcase, looking idly out.

Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on New-
comen bridge.

Corny Kelleher locked his largefootcd boots and gazed, his hat
downtiltcd, chewing his blade of hay.

Constable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day.

— That’s a fine day, Mr Kelleher.

— Ay, Corny Kelleher said.

— It’s very close, the constable said.

Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth
while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth
a coin.

— What’s the best news? he asked.

— I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with
bated breath.

★

A onclegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell’s comer,
skirting Rabaiotti’s icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street.

212

Towards Larry O’Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled
unamiably.

— For Englana . . .

He swung himself violently forward past Katey and Boody Dtdalus,
halted and growled:

—home and beauty.

J. J. O’MoIloy’s white careworn face was told that Mr Lan^bert was
in the warehouse w-iih a visitor.

A stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse and
dropped it into the cap held out to her. The sailor grumbled thanks
and glanced sourly at the unheeding windows, sank his head and swung
himself forward four strides.

He halted and growled angrily:

— For England . . .

Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him,
gaping at his stump with their yellowslobbered mouths.

He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head
towards a window and bayed deeply:

— home and beauty.

The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two,
ceased. The blind of the window was drawn aside. A card Unjurnished
Apartments slipped from the sash and fell. A plump bare generous
arm shone, was seen, held forth from a while petticoatbodicc and taut
shiftstraps. A woman’s hand flung forth a coin over the area railings. It
fell on the path.

One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the
minstrel’s cap, saying:

— There, sir.

★

Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the closesteaming
kitchen.

— Did you put in the books? Boody asked.

Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling
suds twice with her potstick and wiped her brow.

— They wouldn’t give anything on them, she said.

Father Conmee walked through Clongowcs fields, his thinsocked
ankles tickled by stubble.

— Where did you try? Boody asked.

213

— M'Guinness’s.

Boody i-tainpcd her toot and threw her satchel on the tabic.

— Bad ccss to her big face! she cried.

Katcy went to the range and peered with squinting eyes.

— What’s in the pot? she asked.

— Shirts, Maggy said. '

Boody cried angrily;

— Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat?

Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked:

— And what’s in this?

A heavy fume gushed in answer.

— Peasoup, Maggy said.

— Where did you get it? Katcy asked.

— Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said.

The lacquey rang his bell.

— Barang!

Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily:

— Give us it here!

Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl.
Katcy, sitting opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to
her mouth random crumbs.

— A good job we have that much. Where’s Dilly?

— Gone to meet father, Maggy said.

Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added:
— Our father who art not in heaven.

Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey’s bowl, exclaimed:

— Boody! For shame!

A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down
the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water
chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchor-
chains, between the Customhouse old dock and George’s quay.

★

The blond girl in Thornton’s bedded the wicker basket with
rustling fibre. Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink
tissue paper and a small jar.

— Put these in first, will you? he said.

Yes, sir, the blond girl said, and the fruit on top.

. 214

— That’ll do, game ball. Blazes Boylaii said.

She bestowed fat pears neatly, head bv tail, and among them ripe
shamefaced peaches.

Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the
fruiismclling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red
tomatoes, sniffing smells.

H. E. L. Y.’S. filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane,
plodding towards their goal.

He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch
from his fob and held it at its chain’s length.

— Can you send them by tram? Now?

A darkbacked figure under .Merchants’ arch scanned books on the
hawker's car.

— Certainly, sir. Is it in the city?

— O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. I’en minutes.

The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil.

— Will you write the address, sir?

Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her.

— Send it at once, will you? he said. It’s for an invalid.

— Yes, sir. I will, sir.

Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers’ pocket.

— What's the damage? he asked.

The blond girl’s slim fingers reckoned the fruits.

Blazes Boylan looked into the cut of her blouse. A young pullet.
He took a red carnation from the tall stemglass.

-—This for me? he asked gallantly.

The blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, with his
tic a bit crooked, blushing.

— Yes, sir, she said.

Bending archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing peaches.

Blazes Boylan looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk ol
the red flower between his smiling teeth.

— May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked roguishly.

★

— Mai Almidano Artifoni said.

He gazed over Stephen’s shoulder at Goldsmith’s knobby poll.

Two earfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore,

215

gripping frankly the handrcsts. Pale faces. Men’s arms frankly round
their stunted forms. They looked from Trinity to the blind columned
porch of the bank of Ireland where pigeons roocoocooed.

— Anch'io ho avuto di queste idee^ Almidano Artifoni said, quand'
ero giovine come Lei. Rppoi mi sono convinto che il mondo e una bestia.
£ peccato. Perche la sua voce . . . sarebbe un cespite di rendita, via.
Invece, Lei si sacrijica.

— Sacrijizio incruento, Stephen said smiling, swaying his ashplant in
slow swingswong from its midpoint, lightly.

— Speriamo, the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. Ma, dia
retta a me. Ci rifletta.

By the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore
tram unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a band.

— Ci rijletterd, Stephen said, glancing down the solid trouscrlcg.

— MOi sul serioy eh? Almidano Artifoni said.

His heavy hand took Stephen’s firmly. Human eyes. They gazed
curiously an instant and turned quickly towards a Dalkey tram.

— Eccolo, Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. Venga a
trovarmi e ci pensi. Addio, caro.

— Arrivederla, maestro^ Stephen said, raising his hat when his hand
was freed. Egrazie.

— £)/' Almidano Artifoni said. Scusi^eh? Tante belle cose!

Almidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal,
trotted on stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted,
signalling in vain among the rout of barekneed gillies smuggling
implements of music through Trinity gates.

Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of The IVoman in
White far back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper
into her typewriter.

Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one,
Marion? Change it and get another by Mary Cecil Hayc.

The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled
them: six.

Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard;

— 1 6 June 1 904.

Five tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny’s corner and

216

the slab where Wolfe Tone’s statue was not, ecled themselves turning
H. E. L. Y.’S and plodded back as they had come.

Then she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming
soubrettc, and, listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and
capital esses. Mustard hair and dauby checks. She’s not nicelooking,
is she? The way she is holding up her bit of a skirt. Wonder will that
fellow be at the band tonight. If I could get that dressmaker to make
a concertina skirt like Susy Nagle’s. They kick out grand. Shannon
and all the boatclub swells never took his eyes off her. Hope to
goodness he won’t keep me here till seven.

The telephone rang rudely by her ear.

— Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I’ll ring them up after five.
Only those two, sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, sir. Then
I can go after six if you’re not back. A quarter after. Yes, sir.
Twentyseven and six. I’ll tell him. Yes: one, seven, six.

She scribbled three figures on an envelope.

— Mr Boylan! Hello! That gentleman from Sport was in looking
for you. Mr Lenehan, yes. He said he’ll be in the Ormond at four.
No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring them up after five.

★

Two pink faces turned in the flare of the liny torch.

— Who’s that? Ned Lambert asked. Is that Crotty?

— Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied, groping for foot-
hold.

— Hello, Jack, is that yourself? Ned Lambert said, raising in salute
his pliant lath among the flickering arches. Come on. Mind your
steps there.

The vesta in the clergyman’s uplifted hand consumed itself in a
long soft flame and was let fall. At their feet its red speck died; and
mouldy air closed round them.

— How interesting! a refined accent said in the gloom.

— Yes, sir, Ned Lambert said heartily. Wc are standing in the
historic council chamber of saint Mary’s abbey where silken Thomas
proclaimed himself a rebel in 1534. This is the most historic spot in
all Dublin. O’Madden Burke is going to write something about it
one of these days. The old bank of Ireland was over the way till the
time of the union and the original jews’ temple was here too before

217

they built rhrir swiagogue over in Adelaide road. You were never
here be tore » Jack, were you?

—No, Ned.

— lit rode down through Dame svalk^ the refined accent said, if

mansion of the Kildares was in Thomas

court.

— i liat’s right, Ned Lambert said. That’s quite right, sir.

— If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to
allow me perhaps . . .

— Certainly, Ned Lambert said. Bring the camera whenever you
like. I’ll get those bags cleared away from the windows. You can
take it from here or from here.

In the still faint light he ntoved about, tapping with his lath the
piled seedbags and points of vantage on the floor.

I'rom a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard.

— I’m deeply obliged, Mr Lambert, the clergyman said. I won’t
trespass on your valuable time . . .

— You rc welcome, sir, Ned Lambert said. Drop in whenever you
like. Next week, say. Can you see?

— Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Lambert. Very pleased to have
met you.

— Pleasure is mine, sir, Ned Lambert answered.

He followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away
among tlie pillars. With J. J. O’Molloy he came forth slowly into
Mary’s abbey where draymen were loading floats w'ith sacks of carob
and palm nut meal, O’Connor, Wexford.

He stood to read the card in his hand.

I he reverend Hugh C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address:
Saint Michael’s, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He’s writing a book
about the Fitzgeralds he told me. He’s well up in history, faith.

The young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a
clinging twig.

— I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J. J. O’Molloy
said.

Ned Lambert cracked his fingers in the air.

— God, he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the carl of
Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one?
I'm bloody sorry I did ii, says he, but I declare to God I thought the arch~
bishop was inside. He mightn’t like it, though. What? God, 1*11 tell

218

him anyhow. That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor.
members they were all of then^, the Geraldines.

The horses he passed started nervously under their slack harn'

He slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him and cried:

— Woa, sonny!

He turned toj. J. O’Molloy and asked:

— Well, Jack. What is it? What’s the trouble? Wait a w hile. Hold
hard.

With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an
instant, sneezed loudly.

— Chow! he said. Blast you!

— The dust from those sacks, J.J. O’.Molloy said politely.

— No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a . . . cold night before . . ,
blast your soul . . . night before last . . . and there was a hell
of a lot of draught . . .

He held his handkerchief ready for the coming . . .

— I was . . . this morning . . . poor little . . . what do you
call him . . . Chow! . . . Mother of Moses!

★

Tom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against
his claret waistcoat.

— Sec? he said. Say it*s turn six. In here, sec. Turn Now On.

He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove,
wobbled a while, ceased, ogling them; six.

Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the
consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carry-
ing the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from
the admiralty division of Icing's bench to the court of appeal an
elderly female with false teeth smiling incredulously and a black
silk slurt of great amplitude.

— Sec? he said. Sec now' the last one I put in is over here. Turns
Over. I’hc impact. Leverage, sec?

He showed them the rising column of disks on the right.

—Smart idea. Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow' coming in
late can sec what turn is on and what turns arc over.

— Sec? Tom Rochford said.

He slid in a disk for himself; and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle,
stop; four. Turn Now On.

219

I 11 see him now in the Ormond» Lenchan said, and sound him.
(^nc good turn deserves another.

Do, 1 om Rochford said. 1 ell hini I’m Boylan with impatience.

— Goodnight, M‘Coy said abruptly, when you two begin . . .

Nosey Hynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it.

— But how docs it work here. Tommy? he asked.

— Tooraloo, Lenehan said, see you later.

He followed .M'Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court.

— He’s a hero, he said simply.

— I know, M'Coy said. The drain, you mean.

— Drain? Lenchan said. It was down a manhole.

1 hey passed Dan Low’ry’s musichall where Marie Kendall, charm-
ing soubrette, smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile.

Going down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire music-
hall Lenehan showed M'Coy how the whole thing was. One of those
manholes like a bloody gaspipc and there was the poor devil stuck down
in it half choked with sewer gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow,
booky’s vest and all, with the rope round him. And be damned but
he got the rope round the poor devil and the two were hauled up.

— The act of a hero, he said.

At the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop
past them for Jervis street.

— This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into
Lynam’s to see Sceptre’s starting price. What’s the time by your gold
watch and chain?

M'Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses’ sombre office, then at
O’NciU's clock.

— After three, he said. Who’s riding her?

— O. Madden, Lenchan said. And a game filly she is.

While he waited in Temple bar M'Coy dodged a banana peel with
gentle pushes of his toe from the path to the gutter. Fellow might
damn easy get a nasty fall there coming along tight in the dark.

The gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the viceregal
cavalcade.

—Even money, Lenehan said returning. I knocked against Bantam
Lyons in there going to back a bloody horse someone gave him that
hasn’t an earthly. Through here.

They went up the steps and under Merchants’ arch. A darkbacked
figure scanned books on the hawker’s cart.

220

— There he is, Lenehan said.

— Wonder what he is buying, M'Coy said, glancing behind.

— Liopoldo or the Bloom is on the Rye, Lenehan said.

— He‘s dead nuts on sales, M‘Coy said. I w’as with him one day
and he bought a book from an old one in Li/fey street for tv/o bob.
There wxre fine plates in it worth double the money, the stars and the
moon and comets-with long tails. Astronomy it was about.

Lenehan laughed.

— I’ll tell you a damn good one about comets’ tails, he said. Come
over in the sun.

They crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay
by the river wall.

Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam came out of Mangan’s, late
Fehrenbach’s, carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks.

— There was a big spread out at Glencree reformatory, Lenehan
said eagerly. The annual dinner you know. Boiled shirt affair. The
lord mayor was there, Val Dillon it was, and sir Charles Cameron and
Dan Dawson spoke and there was music. Bartell D’Arcy sang and
Benjamin Dollard . . .

— I know, M‘Coy broke in. My missus sang there once.

— Did she? Lenehan said.

A card Unjurnished Apartments reappeared on the windowsash of
number 7 Eccles street.

He checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy laugh.

— But wait till I tell you, he said. Dclahunt of Camden street had
the catering and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. Bloom and the
wife were there. Lashings of stuff we put up: port wine and sherry
and Curasao to which we did ample justice. Fast and furious it was.
After liquids came solids. Cold joints galore and mince pies . . .
know, M‘Coy said. The year the missus was there . . .

Lenehan linked his arm warmly.

“But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too
after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o’clock
the morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous
winter’s night on the Featherbed Mountain. Bloom and Chris
Callinan were on one side of the car and I was with the wife on the
other. We started singing glees and ducts: Loy the early beamojmorn-
itig. She was well primed with a good load of Dclahunt s port under
her bcllyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping

221

up against me. Hell’s delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her.
Like that.

He held his caved hands a cubit from him, frow ning:

— I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time.
Know what I mean?

Hib hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in
delight, his body shrinking, and blew- a sw'cet chirp from his lips.

— 'I he lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She’s a
g.uney marc and no mistake. Bloom was pointing out all the stars
and the comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the
great bear and Hercules and the dragon and the whole jingbang lot.
But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them
all, faith. At last she spotted a weeny wceshy one miles away. And
-uhat star is thaty Poldy? says she. By God, she had Bloom cornered.
That one, is it? says Chris Callinan, sure that's only what you might call
a pinprick. By God, he wasn’t far wide of the mark.

Lcnchan stopped and leaned on the rivcrwall, panting w'ith soft
laughter.

— I’m weak, he gasped.

M'Coy’s white lace smiled about it at instants and grew grave.
Lenchan walked on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his
hindhead rapidly. He glanced sideways in the sunlight at M'Coy.

—He’s a cultured allroundman. Bloom is, he said seriously. He’s
not one of your common or garden . . . you know . . . There’s
a touch of the artist about old Bloom.

★

Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awjul Disclosures oj Maria
Monky then of Aristotle’s Masterpiece. Crooked botched print. Plates;
infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered
cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the world. All
butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute
somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.

He laid both books aside and glanced at the third: Tales oJ the
Ghetto by Leopold von Sacher Masoch.

— That I had, he said, pushing it by.

The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter.

— Them arc two good ones, he said.

224

Onions ot his breath came across the counter out of his ruined
mouth. He bent to make a bundle ol the otlier books, hugged them
against his unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them od behind the dingv
curtain.

On O’Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment
and gay apparel of Mr Denis J. Maginni, professor of dancing &:c.

Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Ftiir Tyrants bv fames
Lovebirch. Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes.

He opened it. Thought so.

A woman’s voice behind the dingv curtain. Listen: The man.

No: she \souldn’t like that much. Got her it once.

hfc read the other title: Sicf^ti oj Sin. .More in her line. Let us see.

He read where his finger opened.

— All the dollarbills her husband gave her viere spent in the stores on
•wondrous gowns and costliest jriUies. For him! For Raoul!

Yes. This. Here. Try.

— Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands
jelt Jor the opulent curves inside her deshabille.

Yes. Take this- 7'hccnd.

— Tou are late^ he spoke hoarsely ^ eyeing her with a suspicious glare.
The beautijul woman threw o^ her sabletrimmed wrap., displaying her
queenly shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played
round her perfect lips as she turned to him calmly,

Mr Bloom read again: The beautijul woman.

Warmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded
amid rumpled clothes. Whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils
arched themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments {for him! For
Raoul!). Armpits’ oniony sweat. Fishgluey slime (her heaving embon-
point!). Feel! Press! Crushed! Sulphur dung of lions!

Young! Young!

An elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of
chancery, king’s bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in
the lord chancellor’s court the case in lunacy of Fotterton, in the
admiralty division the summons, exparte motion, of the owners of the
Lady Cairns versus the owners of the barque Mona, in the court of
appeal reservation of judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean

Accident and Guarantee Corporation.

Phlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the
dingy curtains. The shopman’s uncombed grey head came out and

223

his unshaven reddened face, coughing. He raked his throat rudely,
spat phlegm on the floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping
liis sole along it and bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.

Mr Bloom beheld it.

Mastering his troubled breath, he said:

— I’ll take this one.

The shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum.

— Sii fets of Sin, he said, tapping on it. That’s a good one.

★

The lacquey by the door of Dillon’s auctionrooms shook his hand-
bell twice again and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the
cabinet.

Dilly Dedalus, listening by the curbstone, heard the beats of the
bell, the cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely
curtains. Five shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling new at two guineas.
Any advance on five shillings? Going for five shillings.

The lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it;

— Barang!

Bang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint.
J. A. Jackson, W. E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T, Gahan, their
stretched necks wagging, negotiated the curve by the College Library.

Mr Dedalus, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams’s
row. He halted near his daughter.

— It’s time for you, she said.

— Stand up straight for the love of the Lord Jesus, Mr Dedalus
said. Arc you trying to imitate your uncle John the cornetplayer,
head upon shoulders? Melancholy God!

Dilly shrugged her shoulders. Mr Dedalus placed his hands on
them and held them back.

—Stand up straight, girl, he said. You’ll get curvature of the spine.
Do you know what you look like?

He let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his
shoulders and dropping his underjaw.

Give it up, father, Dilly said. All the people are looking at you.

Mr Dedalus drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache.

— Did you get any money? Dilly asked.

— Where would I get money? Mr Dedalus said. There is no-one in
Dublin would lend me fourpcnce.

224

— You got sonic, Dilly said, looking in his eyes.

— How do vou know that? Mr Dcdalus asked, his tongue in his
cheek.

Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly
along James’s street.

— I know you did, Dilly answered. Were you in the Scotch house
now?

— I was not then, Mr Dcdalus said, smiling. VN’as it the little nuns
taught you to be so saucy? Here.

He handed her a shilling.

— Sec if you can do anything with that, he said.

— I suppose you got five, Dilly said. Give me more than that.

— Wait awhile, Mr Dcdalus said threateningly. You’re like the
rest of them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your
poor mother died. But wait awhile. You’ll all get a short shrift and a
long day from me. Low blackguardism! I’m going to get rid of you.
Wouldn’t care if I was stretched out stiff. He’s dead. The man
upstairs is dead.

He left her and walked on. Dilly followed quickly and pulled his
coat.

— Well, what is it? he said, stopping.

The lacquey rang his bell behind their backs.

— Barang!

— Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Dedalus cried, turning on
him.

The lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his
bell but feebly:

— Bang!

Mr Dedalus stared at him.

— Watch him, he said. It’s instructive. I wonder will he allow us
to talk.

—You got more than that, father, Dilly said.

—I’m going to show you a little trick, Mr Dcdalus said. I’ll leave
you all where Jesus left the jews. Look, that’s all I have. I got two
shillings from Jack Power and I spent twopence for a shave for the
funeral.

He drew forth a handful of copper coins nervously.

—Can’t you look for some money somewhere? Dilly said.

Mr Dedalus thought and nodded.

225

Q

— I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O’Connell
street. I’ll try this one now.

— You’re very hinny, Dilly said, grinning.

— Here, Mr I)cdalus said, handing her t\vo pennies. Get a glass of
milk tor yourself and a bun or a something. I’ll be home shortly.

He put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on.

The viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted bv obsequious policemen,
out of Parkgatc.

— I’m sure you have another s'hilling, Dilly said.

'I'he lacquey hanged loudly.

Mr Dedalus amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a
pursing mincing mouth:

— I lie little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn’t do
anything! (J, sure they wouldn’t really! Is it little sister Monica!

★

From the sundial to\^ards James’s Gate walked Mr Kcrnan pleased
with the order he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson boldly along
James’s street, past Shackleton’s offices. Got round him all right. How
do you do, .Mr Crimmins? First rate, sir. I was afraid you might be
up in your other establishment in Pimlico. How arc things going?
Just keeping alive. Lovely weather we are having. Yes, indeed.
Good for the country. Those farmers are always grumbling. I’ll just
take a thimbletul of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir.
^ cs, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible,
terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men
trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do
they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion; most scandalous
revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst.
What I can t understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat
like that . . . Now you are talking straight, Mr Crimmins. You
know why? Palmoil. Is that a fact? Without a doubt. Well now,
look at that. And America they say is the land of the free. I thought
we were bad here.

I smiled at him. America^ I said, quietly, just like that. What is it?
The sweepings of every country including our own. Isn't that true?
That’s a fact.

Graft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there’s money going
there’s always someone to pick it up.

226

Saw him looking at my frockcoat. Dres* docs it. Nothing like a
dressy appearance. Bowls them over.

— Hello, Simon, Failicr Cowley said. How are tilings?

— Hello, Bob, old man, .Mr Dedalus answered stopping.

Mr Kernan halted and preened himselt before the sloping mirror of
Peter Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of
Dawson street. Well worth the halt sovereign I ga\c Nearv for it.
Never built undci three guineas. Fits me down to the ground. Some
Kildare street club toff had it probably. John Mulligan, the manager
of the Hibernian bank, gave me a very sharp eye yesterday on Carlisle
bridge as if he remembered me.

Aham! Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight of the
road. Gentleman. .And now, Mr Crimmins, may we have the honour
of your custom again, sir. "Fhc cup that cheers but not inebriates, as
the old saying ha> it.

North wall and sir John Rogerson's tjuay, w ith hulls and anchor-
chains, sailing westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway,
rocked on the ferry-wash, Elijah is coming.

Mr Kernan glanced in farcw’ell at his image. High colour, ot course.
Grizzled moustache. Returned Indian officer. Bravely he bore his
stumpy body forward on spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that
Lambert’s brother over the way, Sam? U’hat? Yes. He’s as like it as
damn it. No. The windscreen of that motorcar in the sun there. Just
a flash like that. Damn like him.

Aham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his brcatii.
Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to
his fat strut.

Dow'n there Emmet was hanged, draw n and quartered. Greasy black
rope. Dogs licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant’s
wife drove by in her noddy.

Let me sec. Is he buried in saint Michan’s? Or no, there was a
midnight burial in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret
door in the wall. Dignam is there now. Went out in a puff'. Well,
well. Better turn down here. Make a detour.

Mr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of VVatling street by
the corner of Guinness’s visitors’ waitingroom. Outside the Dublin
Distillers Company’s stores an outside car without fare or jarvey stood,
the reins knotted to the wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some Tipper-
ary bosthoon endangering the lives of the citizens. Runaway horse.

227

Denis Breen with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in John
Henry Menton’s office, led his wife over O’Connell bridge, bound for
the office of Messrs Collis and Ward.

Mr Kernan approached Island street.

Times of the troubles. Must ask Ned Lambert to lend me those
reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all
now in a kind of retrospective arrangement. Gaming at Daly’s. No
cardsharping then. One of those fellows got his hand nailed to the
table by a dagger. Somewhere here Lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped
from major Sirr, Stables behind Moira house.

Damn good gin that was.

Fine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That
ruffian, that sham squire, with his violet gloves, gave him away.
Course they were on the wrong side. They rose in dark and evil days.
Fine poem that is; Ingram. They were gentlemen. Ben Dollard does
sing that ballad touchingly. Masterly rendition.

At the siege oj Ross did my father Jail.

A cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders
leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream
sunshades.

Mr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.

His Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it!
Wffiat a pity!

★

Stephen Dedalus watched through the webbed window the
lapidary s fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window
and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their
vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges
of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and winedark stones.

Born all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil lights
shining in the darkness. W’hcre fallen archangels flung the stars of
their brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and
wrest them.

She fiances in a foul gloom where gum burns with garlic. A sailor-
man, rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and
scafed silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and
her hips, on her gross belly flapping a ruby egg.

228

Old Russell with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem,
turned it and held it at the point of his Moses’ beard. Grandfather ape
gloating on a stolen hoard.

And you who wrest old images from the burial earth! The brainsick
w’ords of sophists; .Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal
wheat standing from everlasting to everlasting.

Two old women fresh from their whitf of the briny trudged through
Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded umbrella,
one with a midw'ife’s bag in which eleven cockles rolled.

The w'hirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from
the powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beinglcss beings. Stop!
Throb alw’ays without you and the throb always within. Your heart
you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds
where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too
in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd and butcher, were the
words. Isay! Not yet awhile. A look around.

Yes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time.
You say right, sir. A Monday morning, ’twas so, indeed.

Stephen went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking
against his shoulderbladc. In Clohissey’s window a faded i860 print
of Hccnan boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square
hats stood round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in light
loincloths proposed gently each to other his bulbous fists. And they
are throbbing: heroes’ hearts.

He turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.

— Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.

Tattered pages. The Irish Beekeeper. Lije and Miracles oj the Qure
oj Ars. Pocket Guide to Kiltarney.

I might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. Stephana Dedalo,
alumno optima^ palmamjerenti.

Father Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the
hamlet of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.

Binding too good probably, what is this? Eighth and ninth book of
Moses. Secret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages:
read and read. Who has passed here before me? How to soften
chapped hands. Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a
woman’s love. For me this. Say the following talisman three times
with hands folded:

•^Se el yilo nebrakada Jemininumt Amor me solo! Sanktus! Amen,

229

\\ ho urotc this? Charn•^ and invocations of the most blessed abbot
Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other
abbot’s, charms, mumbling Joachim’s. Down, baldynoddle, or
we’ll wool vour wool.

— \\ hat arc vou doing here, Stephen.

Dillv’s hig?: shoulders and shabby dress.

Shut the book <juick. Don’t let see.

— \\ hat are you doing? Stephen said.

A Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides.
It glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told
her ot Paris. Late licabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a
pinchbeck bracelet, Dan Kelly’s token. N ebrakadu jemininum.

— W hat have vou there? Stephen asked.

— I boiiglit it from the other cart for a penny, Dilly said, laughing
nervously. Is it any good?

My eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and
daring. Shadow' of my mind.

He took the covcrless book from her hand. Chardenal’s French
primer.

— What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn h'rench?

She nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.

Show no surprise. Quite natural.

— Here, Stephen said. It’s all right. Mind Maggy doesn’t pawn
it on you. I suppose all my books are gone.

— Some, Dilly said. We had to.

She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agcnbitc. All against us.
She will drown me w’ith her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed
hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death.

We.

Agenbite of inwit. Inw'it’s agenbite.

Misery! Misery!

★

— Hello, Simon, Father Cowley said. How arc things?

— Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Dedalus answered, stopping.

They clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter’s. Father
Cowley brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.
— What’s the best news? Mr Dedalus said.

230

— Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I’m barricaded up,
Simon, with two men prowling around the house trying to effect an
entrance.

— Jolly, Mr Dcdalus said. Who is it?

— U, Father Cowlev said. A certain gombeen man of our
acquaintance.

— W'ith a broken back, is it? Mr Dedalus asked.

— The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben ot that
ilk. I’m just waiting for Ben Dollard. He’s going to say a word to
Long John to get him to take those two men off. All I w ant is a little
time.

He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple
bulging in his neck.

— I know, Mr Dcdalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He’s
alw'ays doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard!

He put on his glasses and ga2cd tow'ards the metal bridge an instant.

— There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.

Ben Dollard’s loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops
crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards
them at an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails.

As he came near Mr Dcdalus greeted:

— Hold that fellow' with the bad trousers.

— Hold him now, Ben Dollard said.

Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben
Dollard’s hgurc. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he
muttered sneeringly:

—That’s a pretty garment, isn’t it, for a summer s day?

—Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard grow-Ied
furiously, I threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.

He stood beside theni beaming on them first and on his roomy
clothes from points of which Mr Dcdalus flicked fluff, saying.

—They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow.

—Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said.

Thanks be to God he’s not paid yet. . ^ .

—And how is that basso projondo, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked.

Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmauricc Tisdall Farrell, murmuring,

glasseycd, strode past the Kildare street club. ^

Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter s mouth, gave
forth a deep note.

23 1

— Aw! he said.

— I hat’s the style, Air Dedalus said, nodding to its drone.

—What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What?

He turned to both.

— I hat’ll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.

The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old Chapterhouse of
saint Mary s abbey past Janies and Charles Kennedy’s, rectifiers,

ines tall and personable, towards the Tholscl
beyond the Ford of Hurdles.

Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them
forward, his joyful fingers in the air.

—Come along with me to the subsherifF’s office, he said. I want to
show you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He’s a cross between
Lobcngula and Lynchehaun. He’s w'cll worth seeing, mind you.
Come along. I saw John Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just
MOW’ and it will cost me a fall if I don’t . . *. wait awhile . . .
We’re on the right lay. Bob, believe you me.

— For a few days tell him. Father Cowley said anxiously.

Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling
button of his coal wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped
away the heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright.

—What few' days? he boomed. Hasn’t your landlord distrained for
rent?

— He has. Father Cowley said.

— Then our friend’s w-rit is not worth the paper it’s printed on,
Ben Dollard said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all
the particulars. 29 Windsor avenue. Love is the name?

— That’s right. Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He’s
a minister in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that?

You can tell Barabbas from me, Ben Dollard said, that he can put
that writ where Jacko put the nuts.

He led Father Cow'ley boldly forw'ard linked to his bulk.

— Filberts I believe they were, Mr Dedalus said, as he dropped his
glasses on his coatfront, following them.

★

The youngster will be all right, Martin Cunningham said, as
they passed out of the Castleyard gate.

232

The policeman touched his forehead.

— God bless you, .Martin Cunningham said, cheerily.

He signed to the waiting jarvev who chvicked at the reins and set
on towards Lord Edward street.

Bron2e by gold. Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head,
appeared above the crossblind ol the Ormond hotel.

—Yes, Martin Cunningham said, fingering his beard. I wrote to
Father Conmec and laid the whole case before him.

— You could try our friend, .Mr Power suggested backward.

— Boyd? Martin Cunningham said shortly. Touch me not.

John Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after their,
quickly down Cork hill.

On the steps of the City hall Councillor Nannctti, descending,
hailed Alderman Cowley and Councillor .Abraham Lyon ascending.

The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street.

— Look here Martin, John Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at
the Mali office. I sec Bloom put his name down for five shillings.

— Quite right, Martin Cunningham said, taking the list. And put
down the five shillings too.

— Without a second word either, Mr PovNcr said.

— Strange but true, Martin Cunningham added.

John Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes.

— ril say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted elegantly.

They went down Parliament street.

— There’s Jimmy Henry, .Mr Power said, just heading for
Kavanagh’s.

— Righto, .Martin Cunningham said. Here goes.

Outside la Mahon Claire Blazes Boylan waylaid Jack .Mooney’s
brother-in-law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties.

John Wyse Nolan fell back with .Mr Power, while .Martin Cunning-
ham took the elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail
suit who walked uncertainly with liasty steps past Micky Anderson’s
watches.

—The assistant town clerk’s corns are giving him some trouble,

John W'yse Nolan told .Mr Power.

They followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh’s wine-
rooms. The empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate.
Martin Cunningham, speaking always, showed often the list at which
Jimmy Henry did not glance.

233

—And Long John Fanning is here too, John W'vse Xolan said, as
large as life.

I lie tall form ot Long John Fanning filled the doorway where he
'■tood.

—Good day. Mr Subsherirf, Martin Cunningham said, as all halted
and greeted.

Long John Fanning made no way tor them. He removed his large

Henry Clay decisively and his large fierce eves scowled intelligently
over all their faces. ’

—Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations?
he said, with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk.

Hell open to Christians they were having, Jimmy Henry said
pettishly, about their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal
he wanted to know, to keep order in the council chamber. And old
Barlow the macebearer laid up with asthma, no mace on the table,
nothing in order, no quorum even and Hutchinson, the lord mayor’
in Llandudno and little Lorcan Sherlock doing /ocum tenem for him.’
Damned Irish language, of our forefathers.

Long John Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.

Martin Cunningham spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard
to the assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while John Wyse Nolan
held his peace.

—What Dignam was that? Long John Fanning asked.

Jimmy Henry made a grimace and lifted his left foot.

— O. my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness’
sake till I sit down somewhere. Uff! Goo! Mind!

Testily he made room for himself beside Long John Fanning’s flank
and passed in and up the stairs.

—Come on up, .Martin Cunningham said to the subsherift'. I don’t
think you knew him or perhaps you did, though.

W itii John Wyse Nolan .Mr Power followed them in.

— Decent little soul he was, Mr Power said to the stalwart back of

Long John Fanning ascending towards Long John Fanning in the
mirror* ®

— Rather lowsized, Dignam of .Menton’s office that W’as, Martin
C unmngham said.

Long John Fanning could not remember him.'

Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air.

— \Miat’s that? Martin Cunningham said.

234

All turned where they stood; John Wysc Nolan came down again.
From the cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament
street, harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they
went past before his cool unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of
the leaders, leaping leaders, rode outriders.

— What was it? Martin Cunninghant asked, as they went on up the
staircase.

— The lord lieutenant general and general governor of Ireland.
John Wysc Nolan answered from the stairfoot.

★

As they trod across the thick carpet Buck Mulligan whispered
behind his panama to Haines.

— Parnell’s brother. There in the corner.

They chose a small table near the window opposite a longfaced man
whose beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard.

— Is that he? Haines asked, twisting round in his scat.

— Yes, Mulligan said. That’s John Howard, his brother, our city
marshal.

John Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey
claw went up again to his forehead whereat it rested.

An instant after, under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghost-
bright, at his foe and fell once more upon a working corner.

— I’ll take a melangf, Haines said to the waitress.

— Two milangts^ Buck Mulligan said. And bring us some scones
and butter and some cakes as well.

When she had gone he said, laughing:

— We call it D. B. C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but
you missed Dcdalus on Hamlet.

Haines opened his newbought book.

— I’m sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of
all minds that have lost their balance.

The onelcgged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street:

— England expects . . .

Buck Mulligan’s primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter.

— You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance.
Wandering i£ngus I call him.

— I am sure he has an idie jixe^ Haines said, pinching his chin

235

Di^k Mulligan bent across the table gravely.

—They drove his wits astray, he said, bv'visions of hHI U. n

Hereto' tn^oad^:e7i^a^'^^ ''''
an7d”L“Lert,":upr7hc'’m!.;r, 'r''"'

s,iM ri?,-r'i h"x'.S'.r'““"’ “• •—

pasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup.

dc7^t;77::iL;t7or ' ■'• *’' ,

shin!'!nd f 'hrowaway, sailed eastward by flanks of
trTet oast rn'"’";"* “ “f ^rks. beyond new^W^^^

front ffr^dgw^rje^^^ks':'' '”'

236

Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far
as Mr Lewis Werner’s cheerful windows, then turned and strode back
along Merrion square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling.

At the corner of Wilde’s he halted, frowned at Elijah’s name
announced on the Metropolitan Hall, frowned at the distant pleasance
of duke’s lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With
ratstecth bared he muttered:

—Coactus voiuL

He strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word.

As he strode past Mr Bloom’s dental windows the sw'ay of his
duslcoat brushed rudelv from its angle a slender tapping cane and
swept onwards, having buffeted a thcwless body. The blind stripling
turned his sickly face after the striding form.

— God’s curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you arc! You’re
blinder nor I am, you bitch’s bastard!

★

Opposite Ruggy O’Donohoc’s Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam,
pawing the pound and half of Mangan’s, late Fehrcnbach’s, porksteaks
he had been sent for, went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It
was too blooming dull silting in the parlour with Mrs Stocr and Mrs
Quigley and Mrs MacDowcll and the blind down and they all at their
sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney
brought from Tunney’s. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruit
cake jawing the whole blooming time and sighing.

After Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, court dress
milliner, stopped him. He stood looking in at the two puckers
stripped to their pelts and putting up their props. From the side-
mirrors two mourning Masters Dignam gaped silently. Mylcr
Keogh, Dublin's pet lamb, will meet sergeantmajor Bennett, the
Portobcllo bruiser, for a purse of fifty sovereigns, God, that’d be a
good pucking match to see. Mylcr Keogh, that’s the chap sparring
out to him with the green sash. Two bar entrance, soldiers half price.
I could easy do a bunk on ma. Master Dignam on his left turned as
he turned. That’s me in mourning. When is it? May the twenty-
second. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned to the right
and on his right Master Dignam turned, his cap awry, his collar
sticking up. Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, he saw the image of

237

Mane Kendall, charming soubrcitc, beside the two puckers. One of
tliem mots that do be in the packets of fags Stoer smokes that his
old fellow welted hell out of him for one time he found out.

Master Dignam got his collar down and dawdled on. The best
pucker going for strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind
from that fellow would knock you into the middle of next week, man.
But the best pucker for science was Jem Corbet before Fitzsimons
knocked the stuffings out of him, dodging and all.

In Grafton street Master Dignam saw a red flower in a toff’s mouth ’
and a swell pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk
was telling him and grinning all the time.

No Sandymount tram.

Master Dignam walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks
to his other hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down.

1 he blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt,
blooming end to it. He met schoolboys with satchels. I’m not going
tomorrow cither, stay away till Monday. He met other schoolboys.
Do they notice I m in mourning.^ Uncle Barney said he’d get it into
the paper tonight. Then they’ll all see it in the paper and read my
name printed and pa’s name.

His face got all grey instead of being red like it w'as and there
was a fly walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was w’hen
they were screwing the screws into the coffin: and the bumps when
they were bringing it downstairs.

Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney
telling the men how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was,
and high and hcavylooking. How was that? The last night pa was
boosed he was standing on the landing ilierc bawling out for his boots
to go out to 1 unney’s for to boose more and he looked butty and
short in his shirt. Never sec him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead.
My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn’t
hear the other things he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying
to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope
he is in purgatory now because he went to confession to father Conroy
on Saturday niglu.

★

William Humble, carl of Dudley, and Lady Dudley, accompanied
by lieutenantcoloncl Hcsscltinc, drove out after luncheon from the

238

viceregal lodge. In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs
Paget, Miss de Courcy and the honourable Gerald Ward, A. D. C.
in attendance.

The cavalcade passed out by the lower gate ot Phoenix Park saluted
by obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the
northern quays. The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way
through the metropolis. At Bloody bridge .\Ir Thomas Kernan
beyond the river greeted him vainly from afar. Between Queen’s and
Whitworth bridges Lord Dudley’s viceregal carriages passed and were
unsalutcd by Mr Dudley White, B. L., M. .A., who stood on .Arran
Quay outside .Vlrs M. E. W’hite’s, the pawnbroker’s, at the corner of
Arran street west stroking his nose with his forefinger, undecided
whether he should arrive at Phibsborough more quickly by a triple
change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot through Smithfield,
Constitution hill and Broadstonc terminus. In the porch of Four
Courts Richie Goulding with the cosisbag of Goulding, Collis and
Ward saw him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the doorstep
of the office of Reuben J. Dodd, solicitor, agent for the Patriotic
Insurance Company, an elderly female about to enter changed her
plan and retracing her steps by King’s windows smiled credulously
on the representative of His Majesty. From its sluice in Wood quay
wall under Tom Devan’s office Poddlc river hung out in fealty a tongue
’ of liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of the Ormond Hotel, gold
by bronze. Miss Kennedy’s head by Miss Douce’s head watched and
admired. On Ormond quay Mr Simon Dedalus, steering his way from
the greenhouse for the subsheriff’s office, stood still in midstrect and
brought his hat low. His Excellency graciously returned Mr Dedalus’
greeting. From Cahill’s corner the reverend Hugh C. Love, M. A.,
made obeisance unpcrceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands
benignant had held of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan bridge
Lenchan and M'Coy, taking leave of each other, watched the carriages
go by. Passing by Roger Greene’s office and Dollard’s big red
printing house Gerty MacDowell, carrying the Catesby’s cork lino
letters for her father who was laid up, knew' by the style it was the lord
and lady lieutenant but she couldn’t see what Her Excellency had on
because the tram and Spring’s big yellow furniture van had to stop
in front of her on account of its being the lord lieutenant. Beyond
Lundy Foot’s from the shaded door of Kavanagh’s w'inerooms John
Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the lord lieutenant-

239

general and general governor of Ireland. The Right Honourable
Wdham Hun.ble earl of Dudley, G. C V. O., passed Micky Ander-
son s all times ticking watches and Henry and James’s wax smartsuited
treshchcckcd models, the gentleman Henry, dtrmtr cn James. Over
against Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn watched the
approach of the cavalcade. Tom Rochford. seeing the eyes of lady
Dudley on him, took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his
claret waistcoat and dotfed his cap to her. A charming soubretie,
great Mane Kendall, with dauby cheeks and lifted skirt, smiled
daub, y from her poster upon William Humble, earl of Dudley, and
upon heutenantcolonel H. G. Hesscltinc and also upon the honourable
Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the D. B. C. Buck
Jlulhgan gaily, and Haines gravely, gazed down on the viceregal
equipage oyer the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms
darkened the chessboard whereon John Howard Parnell looked
intently. In Fowncs s street, Dilly Dedalus, straining her sight up-
\ard from Chardenal s first French primer, saw sunshades spanned
and whcelspokes spinning in the glare. John Henry Menton, filling
the doorway of Commercial Buildings, stared frori winebig oyster
eyes holding a fat gold hunter watch not looked at in his fat left
hand not feeling it. Where the foreleg of King Billy’s horse pawed the
air Mrs Breen plucked her hastening husband back from under the
hoofs of the outriders. She shouted in his car the tidings. Under- *
standing, he shifted his tomes to his left breast and saluted the second
carnage. The honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C., agreeably surprised,

H ^o»so"by-s corner a jaded whilc^ flagon H.

halted and four tallhatted white flagons halted behind him, E. L Y ’S

while outriders pran«d past and carriages. Opposite Pigott’s music
warcroonis Mr Denis J. Maginni professor of dancing^ &c, gaily
apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy and unobseLd
By the provost s waU came jauntily Blazes Boylan. stepping in tan

^^oTkshjfe skybluc clocks to the refrain oiMy^rCs a

Blazes Boylan presented to the leaders’ skyblue frontlets and high
acnon a skyblue tie, a widebrimmcd straw hat at a rakish angle and a
yuii of indigo serge His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute

the three ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and
the red flower between his lips. As they drove along Nassau street His
Excellency drew the attention of his bowing consort to the programme

240

of music which was being discoursed in College park. Unseen brazen
highland laddies blared and drunnhumped after the cortege:

But though she's ajactory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.

Baraabum.

Yet I've a sort oj a
Yorkshire relish for
My little Yorkshire rose.

Baraabum.

Thither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green,
H. Thrift, T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F.
Stevenson, C. Addcrly, and W. C. Huggard started in pursuit.
Striding past Finn’s hotel, Cashel Boyle O’Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall
Farrell stared through a fierce eyeglass across the carriages at the head
of Mr E. M. Solomons in the window of the Austro-Hungarian
viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street, by Trinity’s postern, a loyal
king’s man, Hornblowcr, touched his tallyho cap. As the glossy horses
pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius Dignam, waiting,
saw salutes being given to the gent with the topper and raised also his
new black cap with fingers greased by porksteak paper. His collar too
sprang up. The viceroy, on his way to inaugurate the Mirus bazaar
in aid of funds for Mercer’s hospital, drove with his following towards
Lower Mount street. He passed a blind stripling opposite Broadbent’s.
In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown macintosh, eating dry
bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy’s path. At the
Royal Canal bridge, from his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his
blub lips agrin, bade all comers welcome to Pembroke township. At
Haddington road corner two sanded women halted themselves, an
umbrella and a bag in which eleven cockles rolled to view- with
wonder the lord mayor and lady mayoress without his golden chain.
On Northumberland and Landsdownc roads His Excellency acknow-
ledged punctually salutes from rare male w’alkers, the salute of two
small schoolboys at the garden gate of the house said to have been
admired by the late queen when visiting the Irish capital with her
husband, the prince consort, in 1849, and the salute of Almidano
Artifoni’s sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing door.

241

K

★ Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing
Imperthnthn thnthmhn.

Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.

Horrid! And gold flushed more.

A husky fifenote blew.

Blew. Blue bloom is on the
Gold pinnacled hair.

A jumping rose on satiny breasts of satin, rose of Castillc.

Trilling, trilling: Idolores.

Peep! Who’s in the . . . peepofgold?

1 ink cried to bronze in pity.

And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.

Decoy. Soft word. But look! The bright stars fade. O rose!
Notes chirruping answer. Castille. The morn is breaking.

Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.

Coin rang. Clock clacked.

Avowal. Sonntz. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee

Smack. La clochel Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart*
goodbye!

JingJc. Bloo.

Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The
tympanum.

A sail! A veil a wave upon the waves.

Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.

Horn. Hawhorn.

When first he saw. Alas!

Full tup. Full throb.

Warbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.

Martha! Cornel

Clapclop. Clipclap. Clappyclap.

Goodgod henev erheard inall.

Deaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up.

A moonlight nightcall: far: far.

I feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming.

Listen!

The spiked and winding cold seaborn. Have you the? Each and
tor other plash and silent roar.

Pearls; when she. Liszt’s rhapsodies. Hissss.

You don’t?

242

Did not: no, no; believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra.

Black.

Deepsounding. Do, Ben, do.

Wait while you wait. Hee hce. Wait while you hec.

But wait!

Low in dark middle earth. Embedded ore.

Naminedamine. All gone. All fallen.

Tiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair.

Amen! He gnashed in fury.

Fro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding.

Bronzelydia by Minagold.

By bronze, by gold, in occangreen of shadow. Bloom. Old Bloom.
One rapped, one tapped with a carra, with a cock.

Pray for him! Pray, good pcoplcl
His gouty fingers nakkering.

Big Benaben. Big Benben.

Last rose Castillc of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone.

Pweel Little wind piped wee.

True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. .Ay, ay. Like you men. Will
lift your tschink with tschunk.

FfFI Oo!

Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar.^ Where hoofs?
Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl.

Then, not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt.

Done.

Begin!

Bronze by gold. Miss Douce’s head by Miss Kennedy’s head, over
the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by,
ringing steel.

— Is that her? asked Miss Kennedy.

Miss Douce said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and eau
de Nil.

— Exquisite contrast, Miss Kennedy said.

When all agog Miss Douce said eagerly:

— Look at the fellow in the tall silk.

— Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly.

—In the second carriage. Miss Douce’s wet Ups said, laughing in
the sun. He's looking. Mind till I see.

243

She darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face
against the pane in a halo of hurried breath.

Her wet lips tittered:

— He’s killed looking back.

She laughed:

— () wept! Aren’t men frightful idiots?

W ith sadness.

Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose
hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted
twined a hair. Sadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a
curving ear.

— It’s them has the fine times, sadly then she said.

A man.

Bloowho went by by Moulang’s pipes, bearing in his breast the
sweets of sin, by Wine’s antiques in memory bearing sweet sinful
words, by Carroll’s dusky battered plate, for Raoul.

The boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For
them unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering
china, .^nd

— There’s your teas, he said.

Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an
upturned lithia cr.ate, safe from eyes, low.

— What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked.

— Find out, Miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint.

— Your heaUy is it?

A haughty bronze replied:

— I’ll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of
your impertinent insolence.

— Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootsnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated
as she threatened as he had come.

Bloom.

On her flower frowning Miss Douce said:

—Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn’t conduct
himself I’ll wring his ear for him a yard long.

Ladylike in exquisite contrast.

— Take no notice, Miss Kennedy rejoined.

She poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They
cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates
upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses,.

244

both of black satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to
draw, and two and seven.

Yes, bronze from ancar, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear,
hoofs ring from afar, and heard stcelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel.

— Am I awfully sunburnt?

Miss bronze unbloused her neck.

— No, said Miss Kennedy. It gets brown after. Did you try the
borax with the cherry laurel water?

Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror gilded-
lettered where hock and claret glasses shimnKred and in their midst
a shell.

— And leave it to my hands, she said.

— Try it with the glycerine, Miss Kennedy advised.

Bidding her neck and hands adieu .Miss Douce

— Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked
that old fogey in Boyd’s for something for my skin.

Miss Kennedy, pouring now' fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed:

— O, don’t remind me of him for ntcrcy’sakel

— But wait till I tell you, Miss Douce entreated.

Sweet tea Miss Kennedy having poured with milk plugged both
two ears with little fingers.

— No, don’t, she cried.

— I won’t listen, she cried.

But Bloom?

Miss Douce grunted in snuffy fogey’s tone:

— For your what? says he.

Miss Kennedy unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but said, but
prayed again:

— Don't let me think of him or I’ll expire. The hideous old wretch!
That night in the Antient Concert Rooms.

She sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped sweet tea.

— Here he was, Miss Douce said, cocking her bronze head three
quarters, ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hula!

Shrill shriek of laughter sprang from Miss Kennedy’s tliroat. Miss
Douce huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered impcrthnthn
like a shout in quest.

— O! shrieking. Miss Kennedy cried. Will you ever forget his
goggle eye?

Miss Douce chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting:

245

— And vour other eye!

Bloowhose dark cy« read Aaron Figatner’s name. Why do I always
think Figathcr? Gathering figs 1 think. And Prosper Lori’s huguenot
name. By Bassi's blessed virgins Bloom’s dark eyes went by. Blue-
robed, white under, come to me. God they believe she is: or goddess.
Those today. I could not see. That fellow spoke. A student. After
with Dcdalus’ son. He might be .Mulligan. All comely virgins. That
brings those rakes of fellows in; her while.

By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets.

Of sin.

In a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended. Douce with
Kennedy your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze
gigglegold, to let freefiy their laughter, screaming, your other, signals
to each other, high piercing notes.

Ah, panting, sighing. Sighing, ah, fordone their mirth died down.

Miss Kennedy lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and giggle-
giggled. Miss Douce, bending again over the teatray, ruffled again
her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping
her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napccomb showed,
spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter,
coughing with choking, crying;

— O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that, she
cried. With his bit of beard!

Douce gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman,
delight, joy, indignation.

— Married to the greasy nose! she yelled.

Shrill, with deep laughter, after bronze in gold, they urged each
each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold goldbronze,
shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter. And then laughed more.
Greasy I knows. Exhausted, breathless their shaken heads they laid,
braided and pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge.
All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (01), all breathless.

Married to Bloom, to greaseaseabloom.

— O saints above! Miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose.
I wished I hadn’t laughed so much. I feel all wet.

— O, Miss Douce! Miss Kennedy protested. You horrid thing!

And flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly.

By Cantwell’s offices roved Grcaseabloom, by Ceppi’s virgins,
bright of their oils. Nannetti’s father hawked those things about,

246

wheedling at doors as I. Religion pays. Xlust see hini about Keyes s
par. Eat first. I want. Not vet. At four, she said. 1 ime ever passing.
Clockhands turning. On. VVhere eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On.
For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas with those ads. The violet silk
petticoats. Not yet. The sweets of sin.

Flushed less, still less, goldenly paled.

Into their bar strolled Mr Dedalus. Chips, picking chips off one of
his rocky thumbnails. Chips. He strolled.

— O welcome back. Miss Douce.

He held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays?

— Tiptop.

He hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor.

— Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying out on
the strand all day.

— Bronze whiteness.

— That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Dedalus told her and
pressed her hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple males.

Miss Douce of satin douced her arm away.

— O go away, she said. You’re very simple, I don t think.

He was,

—Well now, I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the cradle they
christened me simple Simon.

You must have been a doaty. Miss Douce made r nswer. And what

did the doctor order today?

— Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think I 11
trouble you for some fresh water and a half glass of whisky.

Jingle.

— With the greatest alacrity, Miss Douce agreed.

With grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and
Cochrane’s she turned herself. With grace she tapped a measure of gold
whisky from her crystal keg. Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr
Dedalus brought pouch and pipe. Alacrity she served. He blew
through the flue two husky fifenotes.

—By Jove, he mused. I often wanted to see the Mourne mountains.
Must be a great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening
comes at last, they say. Yes, yes.

Yes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid’s,
into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute.

None not said nothing. Yes.

247

Gaily Miss Douce polished a tumbler, trilling;

— O, Idoloresy queen oj the eastern teas!

— Was Mr Lidwell in today?

In came Lenehan. Round him peered Lenehan. Mr Bloom reached
Essex bridge. Yes, Mr Bloom crossed bridge of Yessex. To Martha I
must write. Buy paper. Daly’s. Girl there civil. Bloom. Old Bloom.
Blue Bloom is on the rye.

— He was in at lunchtime. Miss Douce said.

Lenehan came forw-ard.

— Was Mr Boylan looking for me?

He asked. She answered:

— Miss Kennedy, was Mr Boylan in while I was upstairs?

She asked. Miss voice of Kennedy answered, a second teacup
poised, her gaze upon a page.

— No. He was not.

Miss gaze of Kennedy, heard not seen, read on. Lenehan round
the sandwichbell wound his round body round.

—Peep! Who’s in the corner?

No glance of Kennedy rewarding him he yet made overtures. To
mind her stops. To read only the black ones: round o and crooked ess.
Jingle jaunty jingle.

Girlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She took
no notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, plappcring flatly;

— Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will you put
your bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone?

He droned in vain. Miss Douce turned to her tea aside.

He sighed, aside:

— Ah me! O my!

He greeted Mr Dedalus and got a nod.

— Greetings from the famous son of a famous father.

— Who may he be.^Mr Dedalus asked*

Lenehan opened most genial arms. Who?

^ —Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Stephen, the youthful

Dry.

Mr Dedalus, famous father, laid by his dry filled pipe.

—I see, he said. I didn t recognize him for the moment. 1 hear
he is keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately?

He had.

248

I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Lenehan.

In Mooney’s en vilU and in Mooney’s sur mer. He had received the

rhino for the labour of his muse.

He smiled at bronze’s teabathed lips, at listening lips and eyes.

—The Hite of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous pundit,
Hugh MacHugh, Dublin’s most brilliant scribe and editor, and that
minstrel boy of the wild wet west who is known by the euphonious
appellation of the O’Madden Burke.

After an interval Mr Dcdalus raised his grog and
— That must have been highly diverting, said he. 1 see.

He see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. Set

down his glass.

He looked towards the saloon door.

— I sec you have moved the piano.

—The tuner was in today. Miss Douce replied, tuning it for the
smoking concert and I never heard such an exquisite player.

— Is that a fact?

—Didn’t he. Miss Kennedy? The real classical, you know. And
blind too, poor fellow. Not twenty I’m sure he was.

— Is that a fact? Mr Dedalus said.

He drank and strayed away.

— So sad to look at his face, Miss Douce condoled.

God’s curse on bitch’s bastard.

Tink to her pity cried a diner’s bell. To the door of the diningroom
came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat, waiter of Ormond.
Lager for diner. Lager without alacrity she served.

With patience Lcnchan-waitcd for Boylan with impatience, for jingle

jaunty blazes boy.

Upholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the
oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed
indulgently her hand), soft pedalling a triple of keys to see the thick-
nesses of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall in action.

Two sheets cream vellum paper one reserve tw'O envelopes when I
was in Wisdom Hcly’s wise Bloom in Daly’s Henry Flower bought.
Arc you not happy in your home? Flower to console me and a pin
cuts lo. Means something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Inno-
cence that is. Respectable girl meet after mass. Tanks awfully
muchly. Wise Bloom eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid
smokini? mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair

249

streaming: lo\elorn. For sonic man. For Raoul. Fie eyed and saw
afar on F>sex bridge a gay hat riding on a jauntingcar. It is. Third
time. C oincidencc.

Jingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond
quay, hollow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. Out.

— 1 wopcncc, sir, the shopgirl dared to say.

— .Aha ... I was forgetting . . . Excuse . . .

— .And four.

.At four she. Winsomclv she on Bloohimwhorn smiled. Bloo smi
qui go. Ternoon. 'Fhink you’re the only pebble on the beach?
Docs that to all. For men.

In drowsy silence gold bent on her page.

From the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork
the tune'- had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That
he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure,
purer, softly and softlicr, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call.

Fat paid for diner’s popcorked bottle: and over tumbler tray and
popcorked bottle ere he went he whispered, bald and bothered, with
Miss Douce.

— The bright stars jade . . .

A voiceless song sang from within, singing;

— ... the morn is breaking.

A duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under
sensitive hands. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsi-
chording, called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy morn, of youth,
of love’s leavetaking, life’s, love’s morn.

— The deu'drops pearl . . .

Lenehan’s lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy.

— But look this way, he said, rose of Castille.

Jingle jaunted by the curb and stopped.

She rose and closed her reading, rose of Castille. Fretted forlorn,
dreamily rose.

— Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her.

She answered, slighting:

— Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies.

Like lady, ladylike.

Blazes Boylan’s smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he
strode. Yes, gold from ancar by bronze from afar. Lenehan heard
and knew and hailed him:

250

— Sec the conquering hero comes.

Between the car and window, warily walking, went Bloom, un-
conqucrcd hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on: warm. Black
wary hecat walked towards Richie Goulding s legal bag, lifted alott

saluting.

— And 1 Jrom thee . . .

— I heard you were round, said Blazes Boylan.

He touched to fair Miss Kennedy a rim of his slanted straw. She
smiled on him. But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening for him her
richer hair, a bosom and a rose.

Boylan bespoke potions.

What’s your cry? Glass of bitierr Glass of bitter, please, and a

slocgin for me. Wire in yet?

Not yet. At four he. All said four. , nr.

Cowley’s red lugs and Adam’s apple in the door ol the sheriff s

office. Avoid. Goulding a chance. What is he doing in the Ormond?
Car waiting. Wait.

Hello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In here.
What, Ormond? Best value in Dublin. Is that so? Diningroom. Sit
tight there. Sec, not be seen. I think I’ll join you. Come on. Richie
led on. Bloom followed bag. Dinner fit for a prince.

Miss Douce reached high to take a flagon, stretching her satin arm,

her bust, that all but burst, so high.

— O! O! jerked Lenehan, gasping at each stretch. 01

But easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph.

Why don’t you grow? asked Blazes Boylan.

Shebronze, dealing from her jar thick syrupy liquor for his lips,
looked as it flowed (flower in his coat; who gave him?), and syrupped

with her voice:

—Fine goods in small parcels.

That is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe.

— Here’s fortune. Blazes said.

He pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang.

— Hold on, said Lenehan, till I . . .

— Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale.

— Sceptre will win in a canter, he said.

I plunged a bit, said Boylan winking and drinking. Not on my

own, you know. Fancy of a friend of mine. ^

Lenehan still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at Miss Douce s

25*

lips, that all but hummed, not shut, the oceansong her lips had trilled.
Idolores. The eastern seas.

Clock whirred. Miss Kennedy passed their way (flower, wonder
who gave), bearing away teatray. Clock clacked.

M iss Douce took Bovlan’s coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It
clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the
till and hummed and handed coins in change. Look to the west. A
clack. For me.

— What time is that? asked Blazes Boylan. Four?

O’clock.

Lenchan, small eyes ahungcr on her humming, bust ahumming,
tugged Blazes Boylan’s elbowsleeve.

— ^ Let’s hear the time, he said.

The bag of Goulding, Collis, Ward led Bloom by ryebloom flowered
tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table
near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick.
Not come: whet appetite. I couldn’t do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter,
waited.

Sparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure’s skybluc bow and eyes.

— Go on, pressed Lenehan. There’s no-one. He never heard.

— . . . to F/ora's Ups did hie.

High, a high note, pealed in the treble, clear.

Bronzedouce, communing with her rose that sank and rose, sought
Blazes Boylan’s flower and eyes.

— Please, please.

He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal.

— I could not leave thee . . .

— Afterwits, Miss Douce promised coyly.

— No, now, urged Lcnchan. Sonnezlacloche! Odo! There’s no-one.

She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent.
Two kindling faces watched her bend.

Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord,
and lost and found it faltering.

— Goon! Do! Sonnez!

Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed.
Taunted them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes.

—Sonnez!

Smack. She let free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter
smackwarm against her smackable woman’s warmhosed thigh.

252

—Ltf f/of/iW cried gleeful Lcnchan. Trained by owner. No sawdust
there.

She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren’t men?), but, lightward
gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan.

— You’re the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said.

Boylan, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drankoff his
tiny chalice, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His spellbound
eyes went after her gliding head as it went down the bar by mirrors,
gilded arch for ginger ale, hock and claret glasses shimmering,
a spiky shell, where it concerted, mirrored, bronze with sunnier
bronze.

Yes, bronze from anearby.

— . . . Sweetheart^ goodbye!

— I’m off, said Boyal with impatience.

He slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change.

—Wait a shake, begged Lcnehan, drinking quickly. I wanted to

tell you. Tom Rochford ...

—Come on to blazes, said Blazes Boylan, going.

Lenehan gulped to go.

—Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I m coming.

He followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly by the
threshold, saluting forms, a bulky with a slender.

— How do you do, Mr Dollard?

Eh> How do? How do? Ben Dollard’s vague bass answered,

turning an instant from Father Cowley’s woe. He won’t give you
any trouble, Bob. Alf Bergan will speak to the long fellow. We 11
put a barlcystraw in that Judas Iscariot s ear this time.

Sighing, Mr Dedalus came through the saloon, a finger soothing

an eyelid. ^ ..

— Hoho, we will, Ben Dollard yodled jolhly. Come on, Simon, give

us a ditty. We heard the piano. ^ , , n r

Bald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders, Power ^r
Richie. And Bloom? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His
corns. Four now. How warm this black is. Course ncr\'es a bit.
Refracts (is it?) heat. Let me see. Cider. Yes, bottle of cider.
—What’s that? Mr Dedalus said. I was only vamping, man.

—Come on, come on, Ben Dollard called. Begone, dull care. Come,

Bob.

He ambled Dollard. bulky slops, before them (hold that fellow with

^53

the; l)old him now) into the saloon. He plumped him Dollard on the
stool. His gouty paws phnnped chords. Plumped stopped abrupt.

Bald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered he
wanted Power at\d cider. Bronze by the window watched, bronze
from afar.

Jingle a tinkle jaunted.

Bloom heard a jing, a little sound. He’s otf. Light sob of breath
Bloom sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He’s gone.
Jingle. Hear.

— Love and w'ar, Ben, Mr Dcdalus said. God be with old times.

Miss Doucc’s brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind,
smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), smitten (the
smiting light), she lowered the dropblind with a sliding cord. She
drew down pensive (why did he go so quick when I?) about her bronze,
over the bar where bald stood by sister gold, inexquisite contrast,
corurast incxquisitc nonexquisite, slow cool dim scagreen sliding depth
ol shadow, eiiu lig Nil.

— Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night. Father Cowley
reminded them. I here was a slight difference of opinion between
himself and the Collard grand.

There was.

— A symposium all his own, Mr DedaKis said. The devil wouldn’t
stop him. He w'as a crotchety old fellow in the primary stage of drink.

— God, do you remember? Ben bulky Dollard said, turning from
the punished keyboard. And by japers I had no wedding garment.

They laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. No
wedding garment.

— Our friend Bloom turned in handy that night, Mr Dedalus said.
Where’s my pipe by the way?

He wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat
carried two diners’ drinks, Richie and Poldy. And Father Cowley
laughed again.

— I saved the situation, Ben, I think,

— You did, averred Ben Dollard. I remember those tight trousers
loo. That was a brilliant idea. Bob.

Father Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He saved the
situa. Tight trou. Brilliant ide.

— I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the
piano in the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration

254

and who was it gave nic the wheeze she was doing the other business?
Do you remember? We had to search all Holies street to find them till
the chap in Keogh’s gave us the number. Remember?

Ben remembered, his broad visage wondering.

—By God she had some luxurious opera cloaks and things there.

Mr Dedalus wandered back, pipe in hand.

Merrion square style. Balldrcsses, by God, and court dresses.

He wouldn’t take any money either. What? Any God’s quantity of
cocked hats and boleros and trunkhose. What?

—Ay, ay, Mr Dedalus nodded. Mrs Marion Bloom has left off

clothes of all descriptions.

Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding tyres.
Liver and bacon. Steak and kidney pic. Right, sir. Right, Pat.
Mrs Marion met him pike hoses. Smell of burn of Paul dc Kock.
Nice name he.

— What’s this her name wa--? A buxom lassy. Marion . . .

— Tweedy.

— Yes. Is she alive?

— And kicking.

— She was a daughter of . . .

— Daughter of the regiment.

— Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor.

Mr Dedalus struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after.

— Irish? I don’t know, faith. Is she, Simon?

Puff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling.

—Buccinator muscle is . . . What? . . . Bitrusty . . . O, she
is . . . My Irish Molly, O.

He puffed a pungent plumy blast.

— From the rock of Gibraltar ... all the way.

They pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, bronze
by maraschino, thoughtful all two, Mina Kennedy, 4 Lismorc terrace,

Drumcondra with Idolorcs, a queen, Dolores, silent.

Pat served uncovered dishes. Leopold cut livcrslices. As said before
he ate with relUh the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods roes
while Richie Goulding, Collis, Ward ate steak and kidney, steak then
kidney, bite by bite ot pic he ate Bloom ate they ate.

Bloom with Goulding, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit tor

princes.

By Bachelor’s walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in

255

sun, in heat, mare’s glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding
tyres: sprawled, warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold. Horn.
Have vou the? Horn. Have you the? Haw haw horn.

Over their voices Dollard bassooned attack, booming over bombard-
ing chords:

— When love absorbs my ardent soul . . .

Roll of Bensoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery roof-panes.

— War! War! cried Father Cowley. You’re the warrior.

— So 1 am, Ben \\ arrior laughed. I was thinking of your landlord.
Love or money.

He stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his blunder huge.

— Sure, you’d burst the tympanum of her car, man, Mr Dcdalus
said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours.

In bearded abundant laughter Dollard shook upon the keyboard.
He would.

— .\ot to mention another membrane, Father Cowley added. Half
time, Ben. Amoroso ma non troppo. Let me there.

Miss Kennedy served two gentlemen with tankards of cool stout.
She passed a remark. It was indeed, first gentleman said, beautiful
weather. They drank cool stout. Did she know where the lord
lieutenant was going? .And heard steclhoofs ringhoof ring. No, she
couldn’t say. But it would be in the paper. O, she needn’t trouble.
No trouble. She waved about her outspread Independenty searching,
the lord lieutenant, her pinnacles of hair slowmoving, lord lieuten.
Too much trouble, first gentleman said. O, not in the least. Way he
looked that. Lord lieutenant. Gold by bronae heard iron steel.

— my ardent soul

I care not joror the morrow.

In liver gravy Bloom mashed mashed potatoes. Love and war
someone is. Ben Dollard’s famous. Night he ran round to us to
borrow a dress suit for that concert. Trousers tight as a drum on him.
.Musical porkers. Molly did laugh when he went out. Threw herself
back across the bed, screaming, kicking. With all his belongings on
show. O, saints above. I’m drenched! O, the women in the front
row! O, I never laughed so many! Well, of course, that’s what gives
him the base barrcltone. For instance eunuchs. Wonder who’s
playing. Nice touch. Must be Cowley. Musical. Knows whatever
note you play. Bad breath he has, poor chap. Stopped.

Miss Douce, engaging, Lydia Douce, bowed to suave solicitor,

256

George Lidwcll, gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. She gave her
moist, a lady’s, hand to his firm clasp. Afternoon. Yes, she was back.

To the old dingdong again.

— Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell.

George Lidwcll, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand.

Bloom ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap in
the Burton, gummy with gristle. No-one here: Goulding and I.
Clean tables, flowers, mitres of napkins. Pat to and tro, bald Pat.

Nothing to do. Best value in Dub.

Piano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one together,

mutual understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping fiddles, eye on the
bowend, sawing the ’cello, remind you of toothache. Her high long
snore. Night we were in the box. Trombone under blowing like a
grampus, between the acts, other brass chap unscrewing, emptying

spittle. Conductor’s legs too, bagstrouscrs.jiggedyjiggcdy. Do righ

to hide them.

Jiggedvjinglc jaunty jaunty. . .

Only the harp. Lovely gold glowering light. Girl touched it.
Poop of a lovely. Gravy's rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin.
The harp that once or twice. Cool hands. Ben Howth, the rhododen-
drons. We are their harps. I. He. Old. Young.

—Ah, 1 couldn’t, man, Mr Dedalus said, shy, listless.

Strongly. .

— Go on, blast you, Ben Dollard growled. Get it out in bits.

— M'appari, Simon, Father Cowley said.

Down stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, his long
arms outhcld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. Softly
he sang to a dusty seascape there: A Last Farrwell. A headland, a
ship, a sail upon the billow's. Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awavc
upon the wind upon the headland, wind around her.

Cowley sand:

— M'appari tutt' amor:
li mio sguardo I'incontr . . .

She waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil to one departing, dear one,
to wind, love, speeding sail, return.

— Go on, Simon.

— Ah, sure my dancing days are done, Ben . . . Well ...

Mr Dedalus laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting

touched the obedient keys.

257

s

— No, Simon, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original, (jnc
flat.

The keys, obedient, rose higher, told, bihered, confessed, confused.

L p st.ige strode Father Cowley.

— Here, Simon. I’ll .iccompan\ you, ii< .. F Get up.

By (>raham Lemon’s pineapple rotk, !)\ LKerv's elephant jingle
joggeil. Steak, kidney, liver, mashed at meat fit for princes sat princes
Bloom and Goulding. Princes at meat they raised and drank Pow-er
and cider.

Most beautiful tenor air ever written, Richie said; Sonnambula. He
heard Joe Maas sing that one night. Ah, what M'Guckin! Yes. In
his way. Choirboy style. Maas was the boy. Massboy. A lyrical
tenor if you like. Never forget it. Never.

Tenderly Bloom over livcrlcss bacon saw the tightened features
strain. C ickachc he. Bright’s bright eye. Next item on the pro-
gramme. Paying the piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth a guinea a
box. Stave, it off awhile. Sings too; Down among the dead men.
Appropriate. Kidney pic. Sweets to the. Not making much hand
of it. Best value in. Characteristic of him. Power. Particular about
his drink. Haw in the glass, fresh Vartry water. Peeking matches
from counters to save. 1 hen squander a sovereign in dribs and drabs.
And when he’s wanted not a farthing. Screwed refusing to pay his
fare. Curious types.

Never would Richie forget that night. As long as he lived, never.
In the gods of the old Royal with little Peake. And when the first
note.

Speech paused on Richie’s lips.

Coming out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all.
Believes his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But Want a good
memory.

— Which air is that? asked Leopold Bloom.

— All is lost now.

Richie cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet banshee
murmured all. A thrush. A throstle. His breath, birdsweet, good
teeth he s proud of, fluted with plaintive w'oe. Is lost. Rich sound.
Two notes in one there. Blackbird I heard in the hawthorn valley.
Taking my motives he twined and turned them. All most too new call
is lost in all. Echo. How' sweet the answer. How is that done.^ All
lost now. Mournful he whistled. Fall, surrender, lost.

258

Bloom bent Icopold car, turning a fringe of doylcy down under
the vase. Order. Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep she went
to him. Innocence in the moon. Still liold her back. Brave, don t
know their danger. Call name. Touch water. Jingle jaunty. Too
late. She longed to go. That’s why. Woman. As easy stop the sea.

Yes: all is lost.

A beautiful air, said Bloom lost Leopold. 1 know it well.

Never in all his life had Richie Goulding.

He knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter.
Wise child that knows her father, Dedalus said. Me?

Bloom askance over livcrlcss saw. Face of the all is lost. Rollicking
Richie once. Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. Napkinring in
his eye. Now begging letters he sends his son with. Crosseyed
Walter sir I did sir. Wouldn’t trouble only I was expecting some
money. Apologise.

Piano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. T uned probably.
Stopped again.

Dollard and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out with it.

— With it, Simon.

— It, Simon.

—Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your kind
solicitations.

— It, Simon.

I have no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall

endeavour to sing to you of a heart bowed down.

By the sandwichbcll in screening shadow, Lydia her bronze and
rose, a lady's grace, gave and withheld; as in cool glaucous eau de
Nil Mina to tankards two her pinnacles of gold.

The harping chords of prelude closed. A chord longdrawn, expec-
tant drew a voice away.

— When Jirst I jaw that jorm endearing.

Richie turned.

— Si Dedalus’ voice, he said.

Braintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling that
flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Bloom
signed to Pat, bald Pat is a waiter hard of hearing, to set ajar the
door of the bar. The door of the bar. So, That will do. Pat, w aiter,
waited, waiting to hear, for he was hard of hear by the door.

— Sorrow from me seemed to depart.

259

Through the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not
leaves in murmur, like no voice of strings of reeds or whatdoyoucall-
them dulcimers, touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their
each his remembered lives. Good, good to hear: sorrow from them
each seemed to from both depart when first they heard. When first
they saw, lost Richie, Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person
wouldn't expect it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word.

Love that is singing; love s old sweet song. Bloom unwound slowly
the elastic band of his packet. Love’s old sweet /ow/tez gold. Bloom
wound a skein round four forkfingers, stretched it, relaxed, and wound
it round his troubled double, fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast.

— Full of hope and all delighted , . .

Tenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower
at his feet when will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted.
He can’t sing for tall hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for
him. What perfume does your wife.? I want to know. Jing. Stop.
Knock. Last look at mirror always before she answers the door. The
hall. There? How do you? I do well. There? What? Or? Phila of

cachous, kissing comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the
opulent.

Alas! The voice rose, sighing, changed; loud, full, shining, proud.

—But alas, 'twas idle dreaming . . .

Glorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. SUly
man! Could have made oceans of money. Singing wrong words.
Wore out his wife: now sings. But hard to tell. Only the two them-
selves. If he doesn’t break down. Keep a trot for the avenue. His
hands and feet sing too* Drink* Nerves overstrung. Must be
abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind soup; stock, sage, raw eggs, half
pint of cream. For creamy dreamy.

Tenderness it welled; slow, swelling. Full it throbbed. That’s the
chat. Ha, give! Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect.

Words? Music? No; it’s what’s behind.

Bloom looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded.

Bloom. Flood of warm jimjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow
in music out. in desire, dark to lick flow, invading. Tipping her
tcpping^her tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dUating.
I up. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o’er sluices
pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrop. Now!
Language of love.

260

— . . . ray oj hope . . .

Beaming. Lydia for Lidwcll squeak scarcely hear so ladylike the
muse unsqueaked a ray of hope.

Martha it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel’s song.
Lovely name you have. Can’t write. Accept my little pres. Play on
her heartstrings pursestrings too. She’s a. I called you naughty boy-
Still the name: Martha. How strange! Today.

The voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It sang again
to Richie Poldy Lydia Lidwell also sang to Pat open mouth car
waiting, to wait. How first he saw that form endearing, how sorrow
seemed to part, how look, form, word charmed him Gould Lidwcll,
won Pat Bloom’s heart.

Wish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the barber
in Drago’s always looked my face when I spoke his face in the glass.
Still hear it better here than in the bar though farther.

— ^ach gracejul look . . .

First night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon’s in Tcrenurc. Yellow,
black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After
her. Fate. Round and round slow. Quick round. We two. All
looked. Halt. Down she sat. All ousted looked. Lips laughing.

Yellow knees.

— Charmed my eye ...

Singing. Waiting she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of
perfume of what perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I saw, both full,
throat warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. Why did she me?
Fate. Spanishy eyes. Under a peartree alone patio this hour m old
Madrid one side in shadow Dolores shedolores. At me. Lunng. Ah,
alluring.

— Martha! Ah, Martha!

Quitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passiondominant
to love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony.
In cry of lionel loneliness that she should know, must Martha feel.
For only her he waited. Where? Here there try there here all try

where. Somewhere.

— Co-me, thou lost one!

Co-me thou dear one! , , , ,

Alone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Martha, chestnote,

return.

— Come!

261

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it
leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don’t spin it out too long
long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame,
crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal
bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all

around about the all, the cndlessncssncssncss . . .

— To mi !

Siopold !

Consumed.

Come. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me,
to him, to her, you too, me, us.

Bravo! Clapclap. Goodman, Simon. Clappyclapclap. Encore!
Clapclipclap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Simon! Clapclopclap. Encore,
enclap, said, cried, clapped all, Ben Dollard, Lydia Douce, George
Lidwell, Pat, Mina, two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first
gent with tank and bronze Miss Douce and gold Miss Mina.

Blazes Boylan’s smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, said before.
Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio onchandled Nelson,
reverend father Theobald Matthew, jaunted as said before just now.
Atrot, in heat, heatscated. Cloche, Sonnez la. Cloche. Sonnez to.
Slower the mare went up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too
slow for Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan, joggled the marc.

An afterclang of Cowley s chords closed, died on the air made richer.

And Richie Goulding drank his Power and Leopold Bloom his
cider drank, Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would
partake of two tankards if she did not mind. Miss Kennedy smirked,
disserving, coral lips, at first, at second. She did not mind.

—-Seven days in jail, Ben Dollard said, on bread and water. Then
you’d sing, Simon, like a garden thrush.

Lionel Simon, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. Mina
Kennedy served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan strutted in;
Lydia, admired, admired. But Bloom sang dumb.

Admiring.

Richie, admiring, descanted on that man’s glorious voice. He
remembered one night long ago. Never forget that night. Si sang
Twas rank and jame: in Ned Lambert's 'twas. Good God he never
heard in all his life a note like that he never did then jalse one w had
better part so clear so God he never heard since love lives not a dinking
voice ask Lambert he can tell you too.

262

Goulding, a flush struggling in his pak-, told Mr Bloon^, face ot the
night, Si in Ned Lambert’s, Dedalus’ house, sang 'I'-wds rank andjamt.

He, Mr Bloom, listened while he, Richie Goulding. told him, Mr
Bloom of the night he, Richie, heard him, Si Dedalus, sing 'Tixas rank

andjame in his, Ned Lambert’s house.

Brothers-in-law: relations. We never speak as we pass by. Rilt in
the lute I think. Treats him svith scorn. See. He admires him all the
more. The night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky cords.

Wonderful, more than all the others.

That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It s in the silence you

feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air.

Bloom ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers
plucked the slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzzed,
it twanged. While Goulding talked of Barraclough’s voice production,
while Tom Kcrnan, harking back in a retrospective sort of arrange-
ment, talked to listening Father Cowley who played a voluntary, who
nodded as he played. While big Ben Dollard talked with Simon
Dedalus lighting, who nodded as he sn^oked, who smoked.

Thou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Bloom stretched
his string. Cruel it seems. Let people gel fond of each other: lure
them on. Then tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head.
Outtohclloutofthat. Human life. Dignam. Ugh, that rat s tail
wriggling! Five bob I gave. Corpus paradisum. Corncrake croaker,
belly like a poisoned pup. Gone. They sing. Forgotten. 1 too. And
one day she with. Leave her: get tired. Suffer then. Snivel. Big
Spanishy eyes goggling at nothing. Her wavyavycavyhcavycavy-

evyevy hair un comb: ’d.

Yet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are you not
happy in your? Twang. It snapped,
jingle into Dorset street.

Miss Douce withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased.

—Don’t make half so free, said she, tUl we arc better acquainted.
George Lidwcll told her really and truly: but she did not believe.
First gentleman told Mina that was so. She asked him was that so.
And second tankard told her so. That that was w.

Miss Douce, Miss Lydia, did not believe: Miss Kennedy. Mina,
did not beUeve: George Lidwell, no: Miss Dou did not:
first: gent with the tank: believe, no, no: did not. Miss Kcnn: Lidlydia-

well: the tank.

263

Better write it here. Quills in the postofficc chewed and twisted.
'Bald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad.
He went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat.

— Yes, Mr Bloom said, teasing the curling catgut fine. It certainly
is. few lines will do. My present. All that Italian florid music is.
Who is this wrote.’ Know the name you know better. Take out
sheet notepaper, envelope: unconcerned. It’s so characteristic.

— Grandest number in the whole opera, Goulding said.

— It is, Bloocn said.

Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied
by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are.
One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures
ugghng. Always find out this equal to that, symmetry under a
cemetery wall. He doesn’t see my mourning. Callous: all for his own
gut. Musemathematics. And you think you’re listening to the
ethcrial. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus
X is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It’s on account of the sounds
it is.

Instance he’s playing now. Improvising. Might be what you like
till you hear the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. Begin all right:
then hear chords a bit off: feel lost a bit. In and out of sacks over
barrels, through wirefenccs, obstacle race. Time makes the tunc.
Question of mood you’re in. Still always nice to hear. Except scales
up and down, girls learning. Tw’o together nextdoor neighbours.
Ought to invent dummy pianos for that. BlumenUed I bought for her.
The name. Playing it slow, a girl, night I came home, the girl. Door
of the stables near Cecilia street. Milly no taste. Queer because we
both I mean.

Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pal set with ink pen quite
flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went.

It was the only language Mr Dcdalus said to Ben. He heard them
as a boy in Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing their bar-
caroles. Queenstown harbour full of Italian ships. Walking, you
know, Ben, in the moonlight with those earthquake hats. Blending
their voices. God, such music, Ben. Heard as a boy. Cross Ringa-
bella haven mooncarolc.

Sour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that
cooed a moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar,
replying.

264

Down the edge of his Fretman baton ranged Bloom's your other
eye scanning for where did I sec that. Callan, Coleman, Dignam
Patrick. Heigho! Heigho! Fawcett. Aha! Just I was looking . . .

Hope he’s not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his Frefrr.an.
Can’t see now. Remember write Greek ecs. Bloom dipped, Bloo
mur: dear sir. Dear Henry wrote: dear .Mady. Got your lett and flow.
Hell did I put? Some pock or oth. It is utterl imposs. Underline

imposs. To write today.

Bore this. Bored Bloom tambourined gently with I am ju.t reflect-
ing fingers on flat pad Pat brought.

On. Know what I mean. No, change that cc. Accept my poor little

presenclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. Two about here.
Penny the gulls. Elijah is com. Seven Davy Byrne’s. Is eight about.
Say half a crown. My poor little pres: p. o. two and six. W ^te me a
long. Do you despise? Jingle, have you the? So excited. \Vhy do
you call me naught? You naughty too? O, Mairy lost the pm of her.
Bye for today. Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up Call
me that other. Other world she wrote. My patience are exhaust.
To keep it up. You must believe. Believe. The tank. It. Is. I rue.

Folly am I writing? Husbands don’t. That’s marriage does, their
wives. Because I’m away from. Suppose. But how? She must.
Keep young. If she found out. Card in my high grade ha. No, not
tell all. Useless pain. If they don’t sec. Woman. Sauce for the

gander. . /• j •

A hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver

Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on

which sat a fare, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed m an indigoblue

serge suit made by George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, ot

number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought

of lohn Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter, th.

This is the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz porkshop

bright tubes of Agcndath trotted a gallantbuttockcd marc.

—Answering an ad? keen Richie’s eyes asked Bloom.

—Yes, Mr Bloom said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I expect.

Bloom mur: best references. But Henry wrote: it will excite me.

You know now. In haste. Henry. Greek cc. Better add postscript.

What is he playing now? Improvising intermezzo. P. b. 1 he rum
turn turn. How wUl you pun? You punish me?

ing, whack by. Tell me I want to. Know. O. Course if I didn I

265

wouldn’t ask. La la la ree. Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor

sad.^ Sign H. They like sad tail at end. P. P. S. La la la ree. I feel

>o sad today. La ree. So lonely. Dec.

• #

Me blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy our
ot paper. Murmured: Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, limited.
Henry wrote:

.Miss .Martha Clifford
c o P. O.

Dolphin’s barn lane

Dublin.

Blot oyer the other so he can’t read. Right. Idea prize titbit.
Something detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of
guinea per col. Matcham often thinks the laughing witch. Poor
Mrs Purefoy. U. p.: up.

Too poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms
Shakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not

to be. Wisdom while you wait.

0

In Gerard’s roscry of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. One life
is all. One body. Do. But do.

Done anyhow. Postal order stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk
now. Enough. Barney Kiernan’s I promised to meet them. Dislike
that job. House of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn’t hear. Deaf
beetle he is.

Car near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn’t. Settling those
napkins. Lot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind
on him then he’d be two. Wish they’d sing more. Keep my mind off.

Bald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard
of his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hec hee hee
hcc. He waits while you w'ait. Hee hec. A waiter is he. Hee hec hec
hee. He waits while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will
wait while you wait. ^ hec hee hcc. Hoh. Wait while you wait.

Douce now. Douce L^dia. Bronze and rose.

She had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at the lovely
shell she brought.

To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding
scahorn that he, George Lidwcll, solicitor, might hear.

— Listen! she bade him.

Under Tom Kernan’s ginhot words the accompanist wove music
slow. Authentic fact. How Walter Bapty lost his voice. Well, sir, the

266

husband took him by the throat. Scoundrel, said he. T ou'll sing no
more lovesongs. He did, sir Tom. Bob Cowley wove. Tenors get
worn. Cowley lay back.

Ah, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear! He heard.
Wonderful. She held it to her own and through the sifted light pale

gold in contrast glided. To hear.

Tap.

Bloom through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard
more faintly that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for
other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, a silent roar.

Bronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened.

Her ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside.
Lovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream
first make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion mustn’t forget.
Fever near her mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over: shell
with seaweed. Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? And
Turks their mouth, why? Her eyes over the sheet, a yashmak. Find
the way in. A cave. No admittance except on business.

The sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood is it.
Souse in the ear sometimes. Well, it’s a sea. Corpuscle islands.

Wonderful really. So distinct. Again. George Lidw-ell held its
murmur, hearing: then laid it by, gently.

— What arc the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled.

Charming, scasmiling and unanswering Lydia on Lidwell smiled.

Tap.

By Larry O’Rourke’s, by Larry, bold Larry O’, Boylan swayed
and Boylan turned.

From the forsaken shell Miss Mina glided to her tankard wailing.
No, she was not so lonely archly Miss Douce s head let Mr Lidwell
know. Walks in the moonlight by the sea. No, not alone. With
whom? She nobly answered: with a gentleman friend.

Bob Cowley’s twinkling fingers in the treble played again. The
landlord has the prior. A little time. Long John. Big Ben. Lightly
he played a light bright tinkling measure for tripping ladies, arch and
smiling, and for their gallants, gentlemen friends. One: one, one, one:
two, one, three, four.

Sea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattle market,
cocks, hens don’t crow, snakes hissss. There’s music everywhere,
Ruttlcdgc’s door: ee creaking. No, that’s noise. Minuet of Don

Giovanni he’s playing now. Court dresses of all descriptions in castle
chambers dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving faces
eating dockleavcs. Nice that is. Look; look, look, look, look, look:
vou look at us.

That’s joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is
other joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music
shows you arc. Otten thought she was in the dumps till she began to
lilt. Then know.

M‘Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing
Silk. When she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can’t manage
tnen’s intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I’m w’arm, dark,
open. Molly in quis est homo: Mercadanie. My car against the wall to
hear. Want a woman who can deliver the goods.

Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boylan socks
skyblue clocks came light to earth.

O, look we arc so! Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on
that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that
is. Tinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. Because the acoustics,
the resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal
to the law of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt’s, Hungarian,
gipsycyed. Pearls. Drops. Rain. Diddle iddle addle addle oodle
oodlc. Hiss. Now. Maybe now. Before.

One rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock
Paul de Kock, with a loud proud knocker, with a cock carracarracarra
cock. Cockcock.

Tap.

— Qui sdegno, Ben, said Father Cowley.

— No, Ben, Tom Kcrnan interfered. The Croppy Boy, Our native
Doric.

— Ay do, Ben, Mr Dedalus said. Good men and true.

— Do, do, they begged in one.

I’ll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did not
stay. To me. How much?

— What key? Six sharps?

— F sharp major, Ben Dollard said.

Bob Cowley’s outstretched talons gripped the black deepsounding
chords.

Must go prince Bloom told Richie prince. No, Richie said. Yes,
must. Got money somewhere. He’s on for a razzle backache spree.

268

Much? He scchears lipspccch. One and nine. Penny for yourself.
Here. Give him twopence tip. Deaf, bothered. But perhaps he has
wife and family waiting, waiting Patty come home. Hce hec hee hee.
Deaf wait while they wait.

But wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a
cave of the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic.

The voice of dark age, of unlove, earth’s fatigue made grave
approach, and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called
on good men and true. The priest he sought, with him would he
speak a word.

Tap.

Ben Dollard’s voice barreltonc. Doing his level best to say it.
Croak of vast manless moonless womoonless marsh. Other comedown.
Big ships’ chandler’s business he did once. Remember: rosiny ropes,
ships’ lanterns. Failed to the tune of ten thousand pounds. Now in
the iveagh home. Cubicle number so and so. Number one Bass did
that for him.

The priest’s at home. A false priest’s servant bade him welcome.
Step in. The holy father. Curlycues of chords.

Ruin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end
their days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die.

The voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth had
entered a lonely hall, told them how solemn fell his footstep there,
told them the gloomy chamber, the vested priest sitting to shrive.

Decent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he’ll win in Anrwers poets’
picture puzzle. We hand you crisp five pound note. Bird sitting
hatching in a nest. Lay of the last minstrel he thought it was. See
blank tee what domestic animal? Tee dash ar most courageous
mariner. Good voice he has still. No eunuch yet with all his belongings.

Listen. Bloom listened. Richie Goulding listened. And by the
door deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened.

The chords harped slower.

The voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished tremulous.
Ben’s contrite beard confessed: in nomine Domini, in God’s name. He
knelt. He beat his hand upon his breast, confessing: mea culpa.

Latin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the
communion corpus for those women. Chap in the mortuary, coffin or
coffey, corpusnomine. Wonder where that rat is by now. Scrape.

Tap.

269

They listened: tankards and Miss Kennedy, George Lid well eyelid
well expressive, fullbusted satin, Kcrnan, Si.

The sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since caster he had
cursed three times. You bitch’s bast. .And once at masstiine he had
gone to play. Once by the churchyard he had passed and for his
tnothcr’s rest he had not prayed. A boy. A croppy boy.

Bronze, listening by the beerpuU, gazed far away. Soulfully.
Doesn’t half know I’m. Molly great dab at seeing anyone looking.

Bronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side of her
face? They always kno\\. Knock at the door. Last tip to titivate.

Cockcarracarra.

What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattle-
snakes. Night Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of
Persia liked that best. Remind him of home sweet home. Wiped his
nose in curtain too. Custom his country perhaps. That’s music too.
Not as bad as it sounds. Tootling. Brasses braying asses through
uptrunks. Doublebasses, helpless, gashes in their sides. Woodwinds
mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile music hath jaws. Wood-
wind like Goodwin’s name.

She looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore, lowcut, belongings on
show. Clove her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a
question. Told her what Spinoza says in that book of poor papa’s.
Hypnotised, listening. Eyes like that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle,
staring down into her with his operaglassfor all he was worth. Beauty
of music you must hear tw'icc. Nature woman half a look. God
made the country man the tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy.
O rocks!

All gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorcy all
his brothers fell. To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, he w’ould.
Last of his name and race.

I too, last my race. Milly young student. Well, my fault perhaps.
No son. Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still?

He bore no hate.

Hate. Love. Those arc names. Rudy. Soon I am old.

Big Ben his voice unfolded. Great voice, Richie Goulding said, a
flush struggling in his pale, to Bloom, soon old but when was young.

Ireland comes now. My country above the king. She listens.
Who fears to speak of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. Looked
enough.

270

— Bless me,Jather^ Dollard the croppy cried. Bless me and let me go.

Tap.

Bloom looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill: on eighteen bob a
week. Fellows shell out the dibs. Want to keep your weathcreye
open. Those girls, those lovely. By the sad sea waves. Chorusgirl’s
romance. Letters read out for breach of promise. From Chickabiddy’s
own Mumpsypum. Laughter in court. Henry. I never signed it.
The lovely name you.

Low sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The false
priest rustling soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. They
know it all by heart. The thrill they itch for. Yeoman cap.

Tap. Tap.

Thrilled, she listened, bending in sympathy to hear.

Blank face. Virgin should say: or fingered only. Write something
on it: page. If not what becomes of them.^ Decline, despair. Keeps
them young. Even admire themselves. Sec. Play on her. Lip
blow. Body of white woman, a flute alive. Blow gentle. Loud. Three
holes all women. Goddess I didn’t see. They want it; not too much
polite. That’s why he gets them. Gold in your pocket, brass in your
face. With look to look: songs without words. Molly that hurdygurdy
boy. She knew he meant the monkey was sick. Or because so like
the Spanish. Understand animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift
of nature.

Ventriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What?

Will? You? I. Want. You. To.

With hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed. Sw'clling in apoplectic
bitch’s bastard. A good thought, boy, to come. One hour’s your
time to live, your last.

Tap. Tap.

Thrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs. For
all things dying, want to, dying to, die. For that all things born. Poor
Mrs Purefoy. Hope she’s over. Because their wombs.

A liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes,
calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks.
On yonder river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom’s wave (her
heaving embon) red rose rose slowly, sank red rose. Heartbeats her
breath: breath that is life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of
maidenhair.

But look. The bright stars fade. Orose! Castille. The morn. Ha.

271

L,id\\ell. For hiin then not for. Infatuated. I like that.^ Sec her
from here though. Popped corks, splashes of beerfroth, stacks of
empties.

On the smooth jutting beerpull laid Lydia hand lightly, plumply,
leave it to my hands. All lost in pity for croppy. Fro, to: to, fro: over
the polished knob (she knows his eyes, my eyes, her eyes) her thumb
and finger passed in pity: passed, repassed and, gently touching, then
slid so smoothly, slowly down, a cool firm white enamel baton pro-
truding through their sliding ring.

With a cock with a carra.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing.

The chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be.

Get out before the end. Thanks, that was heavenly. Where’s my
hat. Pass by her. Can leave that Freeman. Letter I have. Suppose
she were the? No. Walk, walk, w-alk. Like Cashel Boylo Connoro
Coylo Tisdall Maurice Tisntdall Farrell, Waaaaaaalk.

Well, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O’er rychigh
blue. Bloom stood up. Ow. Soap feeling rather sticky behind.
Must have sweated: music. That lotion, remember. Well, so long.
High grade. Card inside, yes.

By deaf Pat in the doorway, straining ear, Bloom passed.

At Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was his body
laid. Dolor! O, he dolores! The voice of the mournful chanter
called to dolorous prayer.

By rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, by
empties, by popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes and maiden-
hair, bronze and faint gold in deepseashadow, went Bloom, soft
Bloom, I feel so lonely Bloom.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Pray for him, prayed the bass of Dollard. You who hear in peace.
Breathe a prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. He was the
croppy boy.

Scaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Bloom in the
Ormond hallway heard growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping,
their boots all treading, boots not the boots the boy. General chorus
off for a swill to wash it down. Glad I avoided.

—Come on, Ben, Simon Dedalus said. By God, you’re as good as
ever you were.*

272

— Better, said Tonigin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition of that
ballad, upon my soul and honour it is.

— Lablache, said Father Cowley.

Ben Dollard bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed
and all big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering
castagnettes in the air.

Big Benaden Dollard. Big Benben. Big Benbcn.

Rrr.

And deepmoved all, Simon trumping compassion from foghorn
nose, all laughing, they brought him forth, Ben Dollard, in right
good cheer.

— You’re looking rubicund, George Lidwell said.

.Miss Douce composed her rose to wait.

— Ben machree, said Mr Dedalus, clapping Ben’s fat back shoulder-
blade. Fit as a fiddle, only he has a lot of adipose tissue concealed
about his person.

Rrrrrrsss.

— Fat of death, Simon, Ben Dollard growled.

Richie rift in the lute alone sat: Goulding, Collis, Ward. Uncer-
tainly he waited. Unpaid Pat too.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Miss Mina Kennedy brought near her lips to ear of tankard one.

— Mr Dollard, they murmured low.

— Dollard, murmured tankard.

Tank one believed: Miss Kenn when she: that doll he was: she doll:
the tank.

He murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar
to him, that is to say. That was to say he had heard the name of
Dollard, was it? Dollard, yes.

Yes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Dollard. He sang that song
lovely, murmured Mina. And The last rose oj summer was a lovely
song. Mina loved that song. Tankard loved the song that Mina.

’Tis the last rose of summer dollard left Bloom felt wind wound
round inside.

Gassy thing that cider: binding too. Wait. Postoffice near Reuben
J’s one and eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge round by Greek
street. Wish I hadn’t promised to meet. Freer in air. Music. Gets
on your nerves. Beerpull. Her hand that rocks the cradle rules the.
Ben Howth. That rules the world.

273

T

Far. Far. Far. Far.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

Up the quay went Lionclleopold, naughty Henry with letter for
Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike
hoses went Poldy on.

Tap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tapping, tap
by tap.

Cowley, he stuns himself with it; kind of drunkenness. Better give
way only half way the way of a man with a maid. Instance enthusiasts.
All ears. Not lose a demisemiquaver. Eyes shut. Head nodding in
time. Dotty. You daren’t budge. Thinking strictly prohibited.
Alw'ays talking shop. Fiddicfaddle about notes.

All a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops because
you never know cxac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old Glynn fifty
quid a year. Queer up there in the cockloft alone with stops and locks
and keys. Seated all day at the organ. Maunder on for hours, talking
to himself or the other fellow blowing the bellows. Growl angry,
then shriek cursing (want to have wadding or something in his no
don’t she cried), then all of a soft sudden wee little wee little pippy
wind.

Pwee! A wee little wind piped ccec. In Bloom’s little wee.
— Was he? Mr Dedalus said, returning, with fetched pipe,
with him this morning at poor little Paddy Dignam’s . . .

— Ay, the Lord have mercy on him.

— By the by there’s a tuningfork in there on the . . .

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

— The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked.

I was

— O, that must be the tuner, Lydia said to SimonlioncI first I saw,
forgot it when he was here.

Blind he was she told George Lidwell second I saw. And played so
exquisitely, treat to hear. Exquisite contrast: bronzelid minagold.

— Shout! Ben Dollard shouted, pouring. Sing outl
— ’lido! cried Father Cowley.

Rrrrrr.

I feel I want . . .

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

— Very, Mr Dedalus said, staring hard at a headless sardine.

Under the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely,
last sardine of summer. Bloom alone.

274

— Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice.

Tap. Tap. Tap. lap. Tap. lap. Tap. lap.

Bloom went by Barry’s. Wish I could. Wait. 1 hat wonderworker
if I had. Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. Litigation. Love-
one another. Piles of parchment. .Messrs Pick and Pocket have power
of attorney. Goulding, Collis, Ward.

But for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His vocation:
Micky Rooney’s band. Wonder how it first struck him. Sitting at
home after pig’s check and cabbage nursing it in the armchair. Re-
hearsing his band part. Pom. Pompedy. Jolly tor the wife, .'\sscs
skins. Welt them through life, then wallop after death. Pom. \\ allop.
Seems to be what you call yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate.

Tap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane, came taptap-
tapping by Daly’s window where a mermaid, liair all streaming {but
he couldn’t see), blew whiffs of a mermaid (blind couldn t), mermaid
coolest whiff of all.

Instruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. Even

comb and tissuepaper you can knock a tune out ot. .Molly in her shift
in Lombard street west, hair down. I suppose each kind of trade
made its own, don’t you sec? Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you
the? Cloche. Sonnez la! Shepherd his pipe. Policeman a whistle.
Locks and keys! Sweep! Four o’clock’s all s well! Sleep! All is lost
now'. Drum? Pompedy. Wait, I know-. Fowncrier, bumbailift.
Long John. Waken the dead. Pom. Dignam. Poor little nomine-
domxne. Pom. It is music, I mean of course it’s all pom pom pom very
much what they call da capo. Still you can hear, .^s we ntarch we
march along, march along. Pom.

I must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question
of custom shah of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. .All the same
he must have been a bit of a natural not to sec it was a yeoman cap.
Muffled up. Wonder who was that chap at the grave in the brown

mackin. O, the whore of the lane!

A frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in
the day along the quay towards Mr Bloom. When first he saw that
form endearing. Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane.
Horn. Who had the? Heehaw. Shesaw. Off her beat here. What
is she? Hope she. Psst! Any chance of your wash. Knew Molly.
Had me decked. Stout lady does be with you in the brown costume.
Put you off your stroke. That appointment we made. Knowing

275

we’d never, well hardly ever. Too dear too near to home sweet home.
Sees me, docs she? Looks a fright in the day. Face like dip. Damn
her! D, well, she has to live like the rest. Look in here.

In Lionel Marks’s antique saleshop window haughty Henry Lionel
Leopold dear Henry Flower earnestly Mr Leopold Bloom envisaged
candlestick mclodeon oozing maggoty blowbags. Bargain: six bob.
Might learn to play. Cheap. Let her pass. Course everything is
dear if you don’t want it. That’s what good salesman is. Make you
buy what he wants to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor he shaved
me with. Wanted to charge me for the edge he gave it. She’s passing
now. Six bob.

Must be the eider or perhaps the burgund.

Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their
clinking glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Lydia’s
tempting last rose of summer, rose of Castille. First Lid, De, Cow,
Kcr, Doll, a fifth: Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob Cowley, Kernan and Big
Ben Dollard.

Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall.

Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks’s window.
Robert Emmet’s last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is.

— True men like you men.

— Ay, ay, Ben.

— Will lift your glass with us.

They lifted.

Tschink. Tschunk.

Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze.
He saw not gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor George nor
tanks nor Richie nor Pat. Hce hee hee hec. He did not sec.

Scabloom, grcaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. IVhen my country
takes her place among.

Prrprr.

Must be the bur.

FfF. Oo. Rrpr.

Nations oj the earth. No-one behind. She’s passed. Then and not
till then. Tram. Kran, kran, kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlk-
rankran. I’m sure it’s the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph
be. Karaaaaaaa. Written. I have.

Pprrpffrrppfff.

Done.

276

if I WAS JUST PASSING THE TIME OF DAY WITH OLD TROY OF THE

D. M. P. at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a
bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye. I
turned around to let him have the weight of my tongue when who
should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Joe Hynes.

— Lo, Joe, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see that bloody
chimneysw'eep near shove my eye out w’ith his brush?

—Soot’s luck, says Joe. Who’s the old ballocks you were talking to?

Old Troy, says I, w’as in the force. I’m on two minds not to give

that fellow in charge for obstructing the thoroughfare with his brooms
and ladders.

— What arc you doing round those parts? says Joe.

—Devil a much, says I. There is a bloody big foxy thief beyond
by the garrison church at the corner of Chicken Lane — old 1 roy was
just giving me a wrinkle about him — lifted any God s quantity of tea
and sugar to pay three bob a week said he had a farm in the county
Down off a hop of my thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there

near Heytesbury street.

— Circumcised! says Joe.

—Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Gcraghty.
I’m hanging on lo his taw now' for the past fortnight and I can t get
a penny out of him.

— That the lay you’re on now? says Joe.

— Ay, says I. How' arc the mighty fallen! Collector of bad and
doubtful debts. But that’c the most notorious bloody robber you’d
meet in a day’s w'alk and the face on him all pockmarks would hold a
shower of rain. Te// him, says he, 1 dare him, says he, and / doubledare
him to send you round here again or ij he does, says he. 111 have him
summonsed up bejore the court, so •will l,jor trading without a licence.
And he after stuffing himself till he’s fit to burst! Jesus, I had to laugh
at the little jewy getting his shirt out. He drink me my teas. He eat
me my sugars. Because he no pay me my moneys? ^

For nonperishablc goods bought of Moses Herzog, of 13
Kevin’s parade. Wood quay ward, merchant, hereinafter called the
vendor, and sold and delivered to Michael E. Gcraghty, Esquire, o
29 Arbour Hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward, gentleman,
hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet, five pounds avoirdupois ot
first choice tea at three shillings per pound avoirdupois and three
stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at three pence per pound

277

avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said vendor of one pound
five shillings and six pence sterling for value received which amount
shall be paid by said purchaser to said vendor in weekly instalments
every seven calendar days of three shillings and no pence sterling: and
the said nonperishable goods shall not be pawned or pledged or sold
or otherwise alienated by the said purchaser but shall be and remain
and be lield to be the sole and exclusive property of the said vendor
to be disposed of at his good will and pleasure until the said amount
shall have been duly paid by the said purchaser to the said vendor in
the manner herein set forth as this day hereby agreed between the said
vendor his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the one part and
the said purchaser, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the
other part.

— Are you a strict t. t.? says Joe.

— Not taking anything between drinks, says I.

— What about paying our respects to our friend? says Joe.

Who? says I. Sure, he’s injohn of God’s off his head, poor man.

— Drinking his own stuff? says Joe.

— Ay, says I. Whisky and water on the brain.

—Come around to Barney Kiernan’s, says Joe. I want to see the
citizen.

— Barney mavourneen’s be it, says I. Anything strange or wonder-
ful, Joe?

— Not a word, says Joe. I was up at that meeting in the City Arms.

— What was that, Joe? says I.

— Cattle traders, says Joe, about the foot and mouth disease. I want
to give the citizen the hard word about it.

So we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the back of the
courthouse talking of one thing or another. Decent fellow Joe when
he has it but sure like that he never has it. Jesus, I couldn’t get over
that bloody foxy Geraghty, the daylight robber. For trading without
a licence, says he.

In Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy Michan. There
rises a watchtower beheld of men afar. There sleep the mighty dead
as in life they slept, warriors and princes of high renown. A pleasant
land it is in sooth of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport
the gunnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock, the
grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the mixed coarse fish generally
and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom too numerous to be

enumerated. In the mild breezes of the west and of the east the lofty
trees wave in different directions their first class foliage, the w’afty
sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planctree, the eugenic
eucalyptus and other ornaments of the arboreal world with which
that region is thoroughly well supplied. Lovely maidens sit in close
proximity to the roots of the lovely trees singing the most lovely songs
while they play with all kinds of lovely objects as for example golden
ingots, silvery fishes, crans of herrings, drafts of eels, codlings, creels
of fingerlings, purple seagems and playful insects. And heroes
voyage from afar to woo them, from Elbana to Slievemargy, the
peerless princes of unfettered Munster and of Connacht the just and
of smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruachan’s land and of Armagh the
splendid and of the noble district of Boyle, princes, the sons of
kings.

And there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering roof is seen
by mariners who traverse the extensive sea in barks built expressly for
that purpose and thither come all herds and fatlings and first fruits of
that land for O’Connell Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain
descended from chieftains. Thither the extremely large wains bring
foison of the fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach, pineapple
chunks, Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes, drums of figs, drills of
Swedes, spherical potatoes and tallies of iridescent kale, York and
Savoy, and trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets of mush-
rooms and custard marrows and fat vetches and here and rape and red
green yellow brown russet sweet big bitter ripe pomellated apples and
chips of strawberries and sieves of gooseberries, pulpy and pelurious,
and strawberries fit for princes and raspberries from their canes.

I dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out here,
Geraghty, you notorious bloody hill and dale robber!

And by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and
flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and
medium steers and roaring marcs and polled calves and longwools and
storeshcep and Cuffe’s prime springers and culls and sowpigs and
baconhogs and the various different varieties of highly distinguished
swine and Angus heifers and polly bullocks of immaculate pedigree
together with prime premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is
ever heard a trampling, cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing,
rumbling, grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and
heavyhooved kinc from pasturelands of Lush and Rush and Carrick-

279

mines and from the streamy vales of Thomond, from M‘GilUcuddy’s
reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and
from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders
distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets
of cheese and farmer’s firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn
and oblong eggs, in great hundreds, various in size, the agate with the
dun.

So we turned into Barney Kicrnan’s and there sure enough was the
citizen up in the corner having a great confab with himself and that
bloody mangy mongrel, Garryowen, and he waiting for what the
sky would drop in the way of drink.

There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his cruiskcen lawn and
his load of papers, working for the cause.

The bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give you the
creeps. Be a corporal w’ork of mercy if someone would take the life
of that bloody dog. I’m told for a fact he ate a good part of the
breeches off a constabulary man in Santry that came round one time
with a blue paper about a licence.

— Stand and deliver, says he.

— 1 hat’s all right, citizen, says Joe. Friends here.

— Pass, friends, says he.

Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he:

— What’s your opinion of the times.^

Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob, Joe was equal
to the occasion.

— I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his hand down his
fork.

So begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he says:

— Foreign wars is the cause of it.

And says Joe, sticking his thumb in his pocket:

— It’s the Russians w’ish to tyrranise.

— Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Joe, says I, I’ve a thirst
on me I wouldn’t sell for half a crown.

— Give it a name, citizen, says Joe.

— Wine of the country, says he.

— What’s yours.^ says Joe.

— Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.

Three pints, Terry, says Joe. And how'’s the old heart, citizen?
says he.

280

—Never better, a chara, says he. What Garry? Arc we going to
win? Eh?

And with that he took the bloody old towscr by the scruff of the
neck and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.

The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower
was that of a broadshouldcred dcepchcstcd stronglimbed frankeyed
redhaired freely freckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenoscd
longheaded dccpvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddy-
faced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measure^,
several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was
likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong growth
of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain
gorsc {Vlex Europeus). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles
of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that
within their cavernous obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged
her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the
mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized caulifiowcr. A powerful
current of warm breath issued at regular intcr\’als from the profound
cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale
reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing
the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls

of the cave to vibrate and tremble.

He wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reach-
ing to the knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle
by a girdle of plaited straw and rushes. Beneath this he wore trews of
deerskin, roughly stitched with gut. His nether extremities were
encased in high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet
being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the windpipe
of the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of seastoncs which
dangled at every movement of his portentous frame and on these
were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish
heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles,
Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the Ardri Malachi, Art
MacMurragh, Shane O’Neill, Father John Murphy, 0^^xn Roe,
Patrick Sarsficld, Red Hugh O’Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott,
Sogearth Eoghan O’Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy
Henry Joy M‘Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Thomas C^nneff,
Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captam
Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa. b.

281

Brendan, .Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone
the .Mother of the .Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of
Castille, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at
Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn’t
Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, John L. Sullivan, Cleopatra,

Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Thomas Lipton,
\\ Ilham Tell, .Michelangelo, Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of
Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosalccn,
Patrick W. Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, .Murtagh Gutenberg,
Patricio \ elasquez. Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince
of \\ ales, Thomas Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na
Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler
Hcaly, Angus the Culdcc, Dolly Mount. Sidney Parade. Ben Howth.
\ alcntine Greatrakes. Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Crokcr,
Herodotus, Jack the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva,
The Lily of Killarncy, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba,
Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O’Donovan
Rossa, Don Philip O’Sullivan Beare. A couched spear of acuminated
granite rested by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of the
canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in
uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spas-
modic movements which his master repressed from time to time by

1 1 * I * a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of

paleolithic stone.

So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and
begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid.
O, as true as I ni telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.

—And there’s more where that came from, says he.

—Were you robbing the poorbox, Joe? says I.

—Sweat of my brow, says Joe. Twas the prudent member gave
me the wheeze, ®

—I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane
and Greek street with his cod’s eye counting up all the guts of the fish.
Who comes through Michan’s land, bedight in sable armour?

O Bloom, the son of Rory; it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory's son:
he of the prudent soul. ^

—For the old woman of Prince’s street, says the citizen, the subsi-
dised organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And
look at this blasted rag, says he. Look at this, says he. The Irish

282

Independent^ if you please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman’s
friend. Listen to the binhs and deaths in the Irhh all jor Ireland
Independent and I’ll thank you and the marriages.

And he starts reading them out:

—Gordon, Barnfield Crescent, Exeter; Redmaync of IfRey, Saint
Anne’s on Sea, the wife of William T. Redmayne, of a son. How s
that, eh? Wright and Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Marion
daughter of Rosa and the late George Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham
Road, Stockwcll, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude’s Kensington
by the very reverend Dr Forrest, Dean ot Worcester, eh? Deaths.
Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of
gastritis and heart disease; Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow . . .

— I know that fellow, says Joe, from bitter experience.

—Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of Davie Dimsey, late of the admiralty:
Miller, Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh, June 12, at 35 Canning
Street, Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How’s that for a national press, eh,
my brown son? How’s that for Martin Murphy, the Bantry jobber?

Ah, well, says Joe, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God

they had the start of us. Drink that, citizen.

— I will, says he, honourable person.

—Health, Joe, says 1 . And all down the form.

Ah! Ow! Don’t be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of
that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach
with a click.

And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came
swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth and behind
him there passed an elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the
sacred scrolls of law and with him his lady wife a dame of peerless

lineage, fairest of her race. ^

Little Alf Bcrgan popped in round the door and hid behind Barney s
snug, squeezed up with the laughing, and who was sitting up there
in the corner that I hadn’t seen snoring drunk, blind to the world, only
Bob Doran. I didn’t know what was up and Alf kept making signs
out of the door. And begob what was it only that bloody old panta-
loon Denis Breen in his bath slippers with two bloody big books tucked
under his oxter and the wife hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched
woman trotting like a poodle, I thought Alf would split.

—Look at him, says he. Breen. He’s traipsing all round Dublin

with a postcard someone sent him with u. p.: upon it to take a li . . .

283

And he doubled up.

— Take a what? says L

Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds,

— O hell! says I.

The bloody mongrel began to growl that’d put the fear of God in

you seeing something was up but the citizen gave him a kick in the
nos.

— Bi i dho husht, says he.

— Who? says Joe.

Breen, says Alf. He was in John Hcnrv .Menton’s and then he
went round to Collis and Ward’s and then tom Rochford met him
and sent him round to the subsheriff’s for a lark. O God, I’ve a pain
aughing. U. p.: up. The long fellow gave him an eye as good as a

is gone round to Green Street

to look for a G. man.

going to hang that fellow in Mountjoy? says

Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf Bcrgan?

—Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry,
give us a pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand pounds. You

should have seen long John’s eye. U. p . . .

And he started laughing.

—Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that Bergan>
—Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf.

Terence O Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal
cup full of the foaming ebon ale which the noble twin brothers
Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alcvats,
cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent
berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and
they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and
cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords

Then did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner
born, that ncctarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him
that thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in beauty akin to the immortals.

But he, the young chief of the O’Bergan’s, could ill brook to be
outdone in generous deeds but gave therffor with gracious gesture a
testoon of costliest bronze. Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork
was seen the image of a queen of regal port, scion of the house of

284

Brunswick, Victoria her name, Her Most Excellent Majesty, by grace
of God of the United Kingdom ol Great Britain and Ireland and of the
British dominions beyond the sea, queen, defender of the faith,
Empress of India, even she, who bore rule, a victress over many
peoples, the w'ellbeloved, for they knew and loved her from the rising
of the sun to the going down thereof, the pale, the dark, the ruddy
and the cthiop.

— \Vhat‘s that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, prowling
up and dow'n outside?

What’s that? says Joe.

— Here you arc, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking about
hanging. I’ll show you something you never saw. Hangmen’s letters.
Look at here.

So he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out of his pocket.

— Arc you codding? says I.

— Honest injun, says Alf. Read them.

So Joe look up the letters.

— Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran.

So I saw there was going to be bit of a dust. Bob’s a queer chap
when the porter’s up in him so says I just to make talk;

— How’s Willy Murray those times, Alf?

I don’t know, says Alf. I saw him just now in Capel Street with'

Paddy Dignam. Only I w-as running after that . . .

— You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With who?

— With Dignam, says Alf.

— Is it Paddy? says Joe.

— Yes, says Alf. Why?

•—Don’t you know he’s dead? says Joe.

— Paddy Dignam dead? says Alf.

— Ay, says Joe.

— Sure I’m after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, as plain
as a pikestaff.

— Who’s dead? says Bob Doran.

— You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us and harm.

— What? says Alf. Good Christ, only 6vc . . . What? . . . and
Willie Murray with him, the two of them there near whatdoyoucallhim’s
. . . What? Dignam dead?

— What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who’s talking about . . . ?

— Dead! says Alf. He is no more dead than you are.

28s

— Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this
morning anyhow.

— Paddy? says Alf.

— Ay, says Joe. He paid the debt of nature, God be merciful to him.

— Good Christ! says Alf.

Begob he was what you might call flabbergasted.

In the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by
tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing
luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of
the ethcric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge
of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face. Communication
was effected through the pituitary body and also by means of the
orangeficry and scarlet rays emanating from the sacral region and
solar plexus. Questioned by his earthnamc as to his whereabouts in
the heavcnworld he stated that he was now on the path of pralaya or
return but was still submitted to trial at the hands of certain blood-
thirsty entities on the lower astral levels. In reply to a question as to
his first sensations in the great divide beyond he stated that previously
he had seen as in a glass darkly but that those who had passed over
had sumnut possibilities of atmic development opened up to them.
Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our experience in the
flesh he staled that he had heard from more favoured beings now in
the spirit that their abodes were equipped with every modern home
comfort such as talafana, alavatar, hatakalda, wataklasat and that the
highest adepts were steeped in waves of volupey of the very purest
nature. Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was brought and
evidently afforded relief. Asked if he had any message for the living
he exhorted all who were still at the wrong side of Maya to acknow-
ledge the true path for it was reported in devanic circles that Mars and
Jupiter were out for mischief on the eastern angle where the ram has
power. It was then queried whether there were any special desires on
the part of the defunct and the reply was: JVe greet you^ jriends of
earth, who are still in the body. Mind C. K, doesn't pile it on. It was
ascertained that the reference was to Mr Cornelius Kelleher, manager
of Messrs H. J. O Neills popular funeral establishment, a personal
friend of the defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying out
of the interment arrangements. Before departing he requested that
it should be told to his dear son Patsy that the other boot which he
had been looking for was at present under the commode in the return

286

room and that the pair should be sent to Cullen’s to be soled only as the
heels were still good. He stated that this had greatly perturbed his
peace of mind in the other region and earnestly requested that his
desire should be made known.

Assurances w’ere given that the matter would be attended to and it
was intimated that this had given satisfaction.

He is gone from mortal haunts: O’Dignam, sun of our morning.
Fleet was his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the beamy brow. Wail,
Banba, with your wind: and wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind.

— There he is again, says the citizen, staring out.

— Who? says I.

— Bloom, says he. He’s on point duty up and down there for the
last ten minutes.

And, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then sliddcr off
again.

Little Alf was knocked bav, ways. Faith, he was.

— Good Christ! says he. I could have sworn it was him.

And says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his poll, lowest
blackguard in Dublin when he’s under the influence:

— Who said Christ is good?

— I beg your parsnips, says Alf.

— Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away poor little
Willy Dignam?

— Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He’s over all his troubles.

But Bob Doran shouts out of him.

— He’s a bloody ruffian I say, to take away poor little Willy Dignam.

Terry came down and tipped him the wink to keep quiet, that they
didn’t want that kind of talk in a respectable licensed premises. And
Bob Doran starts doing the weeps about Paddy Dignam, true as
you’re there.

— The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest character.

The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat.
Fitter for him to go home to the little sleepwalking bitch he married,
Mooney, the bumbailifTs daughter. Mother kept a kip in Hardwicke
street that used to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons
told me that was stopping there at two in the morning without a stitch
on her, exposing her person, open to all comers, fair field and no favour.

— The noblest, the truest, says he. And he’s gone, poor little Willy,
poor little Paddy Dignam.

287

And mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the extinction of
that beam of heaven.

Old Garryowen started growling again at Bloom that was skeezing
round the door.

— Come in, come on, he won’t eat you, says the citizen.

So Bloom slopes in with his cod’s eye on the dog and he asks Terry
was Martin Cunningham there.

— O, Christ M’Keown, says Joe, reading one of the letters. Listen
to this, will you?

And he starts reading out one.

7 , Hunter Street, Liverpool,

To the High Sheriff oj Dublin, Dublin.

Honoured sir i beg to ofer my services in the abovementioned painjul
case i hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the ii oj February 1900 and
I hanged . . .

— Show us, Joe, says I.

— . . . private Arthur Chace jor jowl murder oj Jessie Tilsit in
Pentonville prison and i was assistant when . . .

— Jesus, says I.

— . . . Billington executed the awjul murderer Toad Smith . , ,

The citizen made a grab at the letter.

— Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack oj putting the noose
once in he can't get out hoping to bejavoured i remain, honoured sir, my
terms is jive ginnese.

H. Rumbold,

Master Barber.

— And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen.

— And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Joe. Here, says he, take
them to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Bloom, says he, what will
you have?

So they started arguing about the point. Bloom saying he wouldn’t
and couldn’t and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he
said well he d just take a cigar. Gob, he’s a prudent member and no
mistake.

— Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Joe.

And Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card
with a black border round it.

288

— They’re all barbers, says he, from the black country that would
hang their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses.

And he was telling us there’s two fellows waiting below to pull
his heels down when he gets the drop and choke him properly and
then they chop up the rope after and sell the bits tor a few bob a skull.

In the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their
deadly coil they grasp: yea, atid therein they lead to Erebus whatsocv’cr
wight hath done a deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so
saith the Lord.

So they started talking about capital punishment and of course
Bloom comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology
of the business and the old dog smelling him all the time I m told those
Jewies does have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about
I don’t know what all deterrent efiect and so forth and so on.

—There’s one thing it hasn’t a deterrent effect on, says Alf.

— What’s that? says Joe.

— The poor bugger’s tool that’s being hanged, says Alf.

— That so? says Joe,

—God’s truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that
was in Kilmainham when they hanged Joe Brady» the invincible. He
told me when they cut him down after the drop it was standing up
in their faces like a poker.

— Ruling passion strong in death, says Joe, as someone said.

—That can be explained by science, says Bloom. It’s only a natural
phenomenon, don’t you see, because on account of the . . .

And then he starts with his jaw-breakers about phenomenon and
science and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon.

The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft
tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture
of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord
would, according to the best approved traditions of medical science,
be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent
ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres, causing the pores ot the
corpora cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously
facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known
as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has
been dominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards
philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis.

■ So of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the w-ord

289 « -

and he starts gassing out of him about the invinciblcs and the old
guard and the men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetycight
and Joe with him about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and
transported for the cause by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland
and new this, that and the other. Talking about new Ireland he ought
to go and get a new dog so he ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffling
and sneezing all round the place and scratching his scabs and round he
goes to Bob Doran that was standing Alf a half one sucking up for
what he could get. So of course Bob Doran starts doing the bloody
fool with him:

— Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy. Give
us the paw here! Give us the paw!

Arrah! bloody end to the paw he’d paw and Alf trying to keep him
from tumbling oft the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he
talking all kinds of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred
dog and intelligent dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts
scraping a few bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacob’s tin he
told Terry to bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his
tongue hanging out of him a yard long for more. Near ate the tin
and all, hungry bloody mongrel.

And the citizen and Bloom having an argument about the point,
the brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and
Robert Emmet and die for your country, the Tommy Moore touch
about Sara Curran and she’s far from the land. And Bloom, of course,
with his knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face.
Phenomenon! The fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon with
a back on her like a ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the
City Arms Pisser Burke told me there was an old one there with a
cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and Bloom trying to get the soft
side of her doing the mollycoddle playing bizique to come in for a
bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat of a Friday because
the old one was always thumping her craw and taking the lout out
for a walk. And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and, by
the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought him home as
drunk as a boiled owl and he said he did it to teach him the evils of
alcohol and by herrings if the three women didn’t near roast him it’s
a queer story, the old one. Bloom’s wife and Mrs O’Dowd that kept
the hotel. Jesus, I had to laugh at Pisser Burke taking them off
chewing the fat and Bloom with his but don't you see? and but on the

290

other hand. And sure, more be token, the lout I’m told was in Power s
after, the blender’s, round in Cope street going home footless in a cab
five times in the week after drinking his way through all the samples

in the bloody establishment. Phenomenon!

— The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pmtglass

and glaring at Bloom.

— Ay, ay, says Joe.

You don’t grasp my point, says Bloom. What 1 mean is . . .

Sinn Fein! says the citizen. Sinn Jein amhain! The friends we

love are by our side and the foes we hate before us.

The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries
far and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around
the gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred
muffled drums punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of
ordnance. The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes
of lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the artillery
of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the already gruesome
spectacle. A torrential rain poured down from the floodgates of the
angry heavens upon the bared heads of the assembled multitude which
numbered at the lowest computation five hundred thousand persons.
A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended by the Chief
Commissioner in person maintained order in the vast throng for whom
the York Street brass and reed band whiled away the intervening
time by admirably rendering on their blackdrapcd instruments the
matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by Speranzas
plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered
charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins
of whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was
caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n
who sang The Night bejore Larry ‘was stretched in their usual mirth-
provoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade wit
their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy clement and nobody
who has a corner in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity wi
grudge them their hardcarned pennies. The children of the Male an
Female Foundling Hospital who thronged the windows overlooking
the scene were delighted with this unexpected addition to the day s
entertainment and a word of praise is due to the Little Sistere of the
Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and
motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The viceregal

291

houscparty \\hich included inany wellknown ladies was chaperoned by
] heir Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grand
^tand while the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends
of the Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite.
1 he delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore
Bacibaci Beninobenone (the semiparalyscd doyen of the party who had
to be assisted to his scat by the aid of a powerful steam crane). Monsieur
Fierrcpaul Fetitepatant, the Grandjokcr Vladinmire Pokethankens-
cheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hoden-
thaler, Countess Marha ^'iraga Kisaszony Putrdpesthi, Hiram Y.
Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos. AH Baba Backsheesh
Rabat Lokum Etfendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pccadillo y
Palabras y Paternoster dc la Malora dc la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri,
Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkcddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps,
Pan Poleaxe Paddynsky, Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch,
Herr Hurhausdirektorprasident Hans Chuechli-Steucrli, National-

gymnasuimmuscunisanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocent-

generalhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfricd Ueberallgcmein. All
the delegates without exception expressed themselves in the strongest
possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity which
they had been called upon to witness. An animated altercation (in
which all took part) ensued among the F. O. T. E. I, as to whether
the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of
Ireland s patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs,
scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, um-
brellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were
resorted to and blows were freely exchanged. The baby policeman,
Constable MaePadden, summoned by special courier from Booters-
town, quickly resorted order and with lightning promptitude proposed
the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally honourable for both
contending parties. The readywitted ninefootcr’s suggestion at once
appealed to all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFaddcn
was heartily congratulated by all the F.O.T.E.I., several of whom
were bleeding profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having been
extricated from underneath the presidential armchair, it was explained
by his legal adviser Awocato Pagamimi that the various articles
secreted in his thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by him during
tlie affray from the pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of
bringing them to their senses. The objects (which included several

202

hundred ladies’ and gentlemen’s gold and silver %satches) were,
promptly restored to their rightful owners and general harmony
reigned supreme.

Quietly, unassumingly, Rumbold stepped on to the scatFold in
faultless morning dress and wearing his favourite flower tlie Gladiolus
Cruentus. He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian
cough which so many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate — short,
painstaking yet withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the
world-renowned headsman was greeted bv a roar of acclamation from
the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs
in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates
cheered vociterously in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai^ zjvio,

chinchin, polla kronia^ hiphip, vive, Allah^ amid which the ringing
ewiva of the delegate of tlic land of song (a high double F recalling
those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch Catalan! be-
glamourcd our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily distinguishable. It
was exactly seventeen o’clock. I'he signal for prayer was then
promptly given by megaplmne and in an instant all lieads were bared,
the commendatore’s patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the
possession of his family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed
by his medical adviser in attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate
who administered the last comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr
when about to pay the death penalty knelt in a most Christian spirit
in a pool of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and offered
up to the throne of grace fervent prayers of supplication. Hard by
the block stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being
concealed in a tcngallon pot with two circular perforated apertures
through w'hich his eyes glowered furiously. As he aw’aited the fatal
signal he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it upon his
brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of sheep
which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary
office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged
the quartering knife, the various finely tempered disembow'elling
appliances (specially supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers,
Messrs John Round and Sons, Sheffield), a terracotta saucepan for the
reception of the duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc
when successfully extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined
to receive the most precious blood of the most precious victim. The
houscsteward of the amalgamated cats’ and dogs’ home was in atten-

293

dance to convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent
institution. Quite an excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs,
fried steak and onions, done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls
and invigorating tea had been considerately provided by the authori-
ties for the consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was
in capital spirits when prepared for death and evinced the keenest
interest in the proceedings from beginning to end but he, with an
abnegation rare in these our times, rose nobly to the occasion and
expressed the dying wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal
should be divided in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and
indigent roomkeepers’ association as a token of his regard and esteem.
The nec and non plus ultra of emotion were reached when the blushing
bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders
and flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to
be launched into eternity for her sake. The hero folded her willowy
form in a loving embrace murmuring fondly Sheila, my own. En-
couraged by this use of her Christian name she kissed passionately all
the various suitable areas of his person which the decencies of prison
garb permitted her ardour to reach. She swore to him as they mingled
the salt streams of their tears that she would cherish his memory, that
she would never forget her hero boy who went to his death with a
song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in Clonturk
park. She brought back to his recollection the happy days of blissful
childhood together on the banks of Anna LifFey when they had
indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the
dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, includ-
ing the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That
monster audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were
overcome with grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh
torrent of tears burst from their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse
of people, touched to the inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs,
not the least affected being the aged prebendary himself. Big strong
men, officers of the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish con-
tabulary, were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe
to say that there was not a dry eye in that record assemblage. A most
romantic incident occurred when a handsome young Oxford graduate,
noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, pre-
senting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree solicited the
hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the day, and

294

was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the audience was presented
with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a skull and
crossbones brooch, a timely and generous act which evoked a fresh
outburst of emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the bearer,
by the way, of one of the most timehonoured names in Albion’s history)
placed on the finger of his blushing an expensive engagement

ring with emeralds set in the form of a fourleaved shamrock excitement
knew no bounds. Nay, even the stern provostmarshal, lieutenant-
colonel Tomkin-Maxwcll ffrcnchmullan Tomlinson, w'ho presided on
the sad occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of sepoys
from the cannonmouth without flinching, could not now* restrain his
natural emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive
tear and was overheard by those privileged burghers who happened
to be in his*immediatc entourage to murmur to himself in a faltering
undertone;

— God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey
it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it docs, when I sees her
cause I thinks of my old mashtub what’s waiting for me down Lime-
house way.

So then the citizens begins talking about the Irish language and the
corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can’t speak
their own language and Joe chipping in because he stuck someone for
a quid and Bloom putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that
he cadged off of Joe and talking about the Gaelic league and the
antitreating league and drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is
about the size of it. Gob, he’d let you pour all manner of drink down
his throat till the Lord would call him before you’d ever see the froth
of his pint. And one night I went in with a fellow into one of their
musical evenings, song and dance about she could get up on a truss
of hay she could my Maureen Lay, and there was a fellow with a
Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him in Irish and a lot of
colleen bawns going about with temperance beverages and selling
medals and oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob,
flahoolagh eotertainment, don’t be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland
free. And then an old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all
the gougers shuffling their feet to the tunc the old cow died of. And
one or two sky pilots having an eye around that there was no goings
on with the females, hitting below the belt.

So howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was

29s

empty starts mousing around by Joe and me. I’d train him by kind-
ness, so I would, if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now
and again where it wouldn’t blind him.

— Afraid he’ll bite you? says the citizen, sneering.

— No, says 1. But be might take my leg for a lampost.

So he calls the old dog over.

— What’s on you. Carry? says he.

Then he starts hauling and mauling and talking to hirti in Irish and
the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera.
Such growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone
that has nothing better to do ought to w-ritc a letter pro bono publico
to the papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that.
Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is
in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws.

All those who arc interested in the spread of human culture among
the lower animals (and their name is legion) should make a point of
not missing the really marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given
by the famous old Irish red wolfdog setter formerly known by the
sobriquet of Garryowen and recently rechristened by his large circle of
friends and acquaintances Owen Garry. The exhibition, which is the
result ot years of training by kindness and a carefully though tout dietary
system, comprises, among other achievements, the recitation of verse.
Our greatest living phonetic expert (wild horses shall not drag it
from us!) has left no stone unturned in his efforts to delucidate and
compare the verse recited and lias found it bears a striking resemblanc c
(the italics arc ours) to the ranns of ancient Celtic bards. We are not
speaking so much of those delightful lovesongs with which the writer
who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym of the Little
Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving world but rather (as a
contributor D. O. C. points out in an interesting communication
published by an evening contemporary) of the harsher and more
personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of the famous
Raftery and of Donald MacConsidine to say nothing of a more modern
lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a specimen
which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose
name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe
our readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication.
The metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate
alliterative and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more

complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has
been well caught. Perhaps it should be added that the effect is greatly
increased if Owen’s verse be spoken somewhat slowly and indistinctly
in a tone suggestive of suppressed rancour.

The curse oj my curses
Se\‘en days every day
And seven dry Thursdays
On yout Barney Kiernan,

Has no sup oJ uater
To cool my courage.

And my guts red roaring
Ajter Lory's lights.

So he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you
could hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Joe asked him would he
have another.

— I will, says he, a chara, to show there’s no ill feeling.

Gob, he’s not as green as he’s cabbagclooking. Arsing around from
one pub to another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap’s
dog and getting fed up by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertain-
ment for man and beast. And says Joe:

— Could you make a hole in another pint?

— Could a swim duck? says I.

— Same again, Terry, says Joe. Arc you sure you won’t have any-
thing in the way of liquid refreshment? says he.

— Thank you, no, says Bloom. As a matter of fact I just wanted to
meet Martin Cunningham, don’t you sec, about this insurance ot
poor Dignam’s. Martin asked me to go to the house. You sec, he,
Dignam, I mean, didn’t serve any notice of the assignment on the
company at the time and nominally under the act the mortgagee can’t
recover on the policy.

—Holy Wars, says Joe laughing, that’s a good one if old Shylock
is landed. So the wife comes out top dog, what?

— Well, that’s a point, says Bloom, for the wife’s admirers.

— Whose admirers? says Joe.

— The wife’s advisers, I mean, says Bloon^.

Then he starts all confused mucking it up about the mortgagor
under the act like the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and

tor the benefit of the wife and that a trust is created but on the other
hand that Dignam owxd Bridgeman the money and if now the wife
or the widow' contested the mortgagee’s right till he near had the head
of me addled with his mortgagor under the act. He was bloody safe
he wasn t run in himself under the act that time as a rogue and
vagabond only he had a friend in court. Selling bazaar tickets or
what do you call it royal Hungarian privileged lottery. True as

you’re there. O, commend me to an Israelite! Royal and privileged
Hungarian robbery, ®

So Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Bloom to tell Mrs
Dignam he was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the
funeral and to tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said
that there was never a truer, a finer than poor little Willy that’s dead
to tell her. Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Bloom’s hand

doing the tragic to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You’re a
rogue and I’m another.

Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which
however slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time
is founded, as I hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem, as
to request of you this favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits
of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness
—No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which
actuate your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to
me consoled by the reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow

this proof of your confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness
of the cup,

-Then suffer me (o take your hand, said he. The goodness of your

heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words

the expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose

poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even
of speech, ^

. ° Straight. Boosed at five

K KK Leonard knew

the bobby, 14 A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street

alter closing time, fornicating w-ith two shawls and a bully on guard

dnnlcng porter out of teacups And calling himself a Frenchy for the

shawls. Joseph Manuo. and talking against the cathoHc religion and he

semng mass in Adam and Eve’s when he was young with his eyes shut

who wrote the new testament and the old testament and hugging and

smugging. And the two shawls killed with the laughing, picking his
pockets the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed and
the two shawls screeching laughing at one another. Hcnc is your
testament? Have you got an old testament? Only Paddv was passing
there, I tell you what. Then sec hin^ of a Sunday with his little con-
cubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel,
with her patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing
the little lady. Jack Mooney’s sister. And the old prostitute of a
mother procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Jack made him toe
the line. Told him if he didn’t patch up the pot, Jesus, he’d kick the
shite out of him.

So Terry brought the three pints.

— Here, says Joe, doing the honours. Here, citizen.

— Sian leat^ says he.

— Fortune, Joe, says I. Good health, citizen.

Gob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want
a small fortune to keep him in drinks.

— \Vho is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Joe.

— Friend of yours, says Alf.

— Nannan? says Joe. The mimber?

— I won’t mention any names, says Alf.

— I thought so, says Joe. 1 saw him up at that meeting now with
William Field, M. P., the cattle traders.

— Hairy lopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling
of all countries and the idol of his own.

So Joe starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease
and the cattle traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen
sending them all to the rightabout and Bloom coming out with his
shcepdip for the scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the
guaranteed remedy for timber tongue. Because he was up one time
in a knacker’s yard. Walking about with his book and pencil here’s
my head and my heels arc coming till Joe CufFc gave him the order
of the boot for giving lip to a grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your
grandmother how to milk ducks. Pisscr Burke was telling me in the
hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears sometimes with Mrs O’Dowd
crying her eyes out with her eight inches of fat all over her. Couldn’t
loosen her farting strings but old cod’s eye w'as waltzing around her
showing her how to do it. What’s your programme today? Ay.
Humane methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts say

299

and the best known remedy that doesn’t cause pain to the animal and

on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he’d have a soft hand under
a hen.

Ga Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays
eggs for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook
Klook Klook. Then comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under
black Liz and takes her fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook
Klook.

Anyhow, says Joe* Field and Nannetti arc going over tonight to
London to ask about it on the floor of the House of Commons.

— Are you sure, says Bloom, the councillor is going? I wanted to
see him, as it happens.

— Well, he's going off by the mailboat, says Joe, tonight.

That s too bad, says Bloom. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only
Mr Field is going. I couldn’t phone. No. You’re sure?

Nannan’s going too, says Joe. The league told him to ask a
question tomorrow about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish

games in the park. What do you think of that, citizen? The Sluagh
na h-Eireann.

Mr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat): Arising out of the ques-
tion of my honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask
the right honourable gentleman whether the Government has issued
orders that these animals shall be slaughtered though no medical
evidence is forthcoming as to their pathological condition?

Mr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con); Honourable members are already
in possession of the evidence produced before a committee of the
whole house. I feel I cannot usefully add anything to that. The
answer to the honourable member’s question is in the affirmative.

Mr Orelli (Montenotte. Nat): Have similar orders been issued for
the slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the
Phoenix park?

Mr Allfours: The answer is in the negative.

Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman’s famous
Mitchclstown telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the
treasury bench? (O! O!)

Mr Allfours: I must have notice of that question.

Mr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don’t hesitate to shoot.

(Ironical opposition cheers.)

The speaker: Order! Order!

300

(The house rises. Cheers.)

—There’s the man, says Joe, that made the Gaelic sports revival.
There he is sitting there. The man that got away James Stephens.
The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What
was your best throw, citizen?

—Na bacUis^ says the citizen, letting on to be modest. 1 here was a
time I was as good as the next tcllow anyhow.

— Put it there, citizen, says Joe. You were and a bloody sight better.

— Is that really a fact? says .Alt.

—Yes, says Bloom. That’s well known. Do you not know’ that?

So off they started about Irish sport and shonecn games the like
of the lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy
of the soil and building up a nation once again and all of that. And
of course Bloom had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower s
heart violent exercise w'as bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you
took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Bloom: L/)ok
at, Bloom. Do you see that straw? Thai’s a straw. Declare to my aunt
he’d talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady.

A most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of
Brian O' Ciarnain' s in Sraid na Bretaine Bheag, under the auspices of
Sluagh na h-Bireann, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the
importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and
ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race.
The venerable president of this noble order w'as in the chair and the
attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by
the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed,
a most interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high standard
of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the
ancient games and sports of our ancient panceltic forefathers. The
wellknown and highly respected worker in the cause of our old tongue,
Mr Joseph M'Carthy Hynes, made an eloquent appeal for the resuscita-
tion of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised morning and
evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the best traditions
of manly strength and power handed down to us from ancient ages.
L. Bloom, who met with a mixed reception of applause and hi^cs,
having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman brought the dis-
cussion to a close, in response to repeated requests and hearty
from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy ren er-
ing of the immortal Thomas Osborne Davis’ evergreen verses (happi y

301

too familiar to need recalling here) A nation once again in the execution
of which the veteran patriot champion may be said without fear of
contradiction to have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-
Garibaldi was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were heard
to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured anthem sung as only
our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, which by its
supcrquality greatly enchanced his already international reputation,
was vociferously applauded by the large audience amongst which were
to be noticed many prominent members of the clergy as well as
representatives of the press and the bar and the other learned profes-
sions. The proceedings then terminated.

Amongst the clergy present were the very rev. William Dclany,

S. J., L. L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Molloy, D. D.; the rev. P. J.
Kavanagh, C. S. Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C. C.; the rev. John M.
Ivcrs, P. p.; the rev. P. J. Cleary, O. S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey,
O. P.; the very rev. Fr. Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B.
Gorman, O. D. C.; the rev. T. Maher, S. J.; the very rev. James
Murphy, S. J.; the rev. John Lavery, V. F.; the very rev. William
Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M.; the rev. T. Brangan,
O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A. Hackett, C. C.; the
rev. W. Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr M’Manus, V. G.; the rev. B.
R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the very rev. M. D. Scally, P. P.; the rev. F.

T. Purcell, O. P.; the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the
rev. J. Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke, etc., etc.

—Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that Keogh-
Bcnnctt match?

-^No, says Joe.

— I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf.

— Who? Blazes? says Joe.

And says Bloom:

— What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and train-
ing of the eye.

Ay, Blazes, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to
run the odds and he swatting all the time.

We know him, says the citizen. The traitor’s son. We know what
put English gold in his pocket.

—True for you, says Joe.

And Bloom cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of
the blood, asking Alf:

302

— Now don’t you thinlc» Bcrgan?

— Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Hcenan and Sayers was
only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a
beating. See the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow
swiping. God, he gave him one last puck in the wind. Queensberry
rules and all, made him puke what he never ate.

It was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were
scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handi-
capped as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin’s pet lamb made up for
it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a
gruelling for both champions. The welterweight scrgeantmajor had
tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh
had been rcceivcrgcneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting
in some neat work on the pet’s nose, and Myler came on looking
groggy. The soldier got to business leading off with a powerful left
jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one
flush to the point of Bennett’s jaw. The redcoat ducked but the
Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one.
The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got
his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes,
Myler punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly
closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and,
when the bell went, came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of
knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish
and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement
ran fever high. The referee twice cautioned Pucking Percy for hold-
ing but the pet was tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a
brisk exchange of courtesies during which a sniart upper cut of the
military man brought blood freely from his opponent’s mouth the
lamb suddenly ’waded in all over his man and landed a terrific left to
Battling Bennett’s stomach, flooring him flat. It was a knockout clean
and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being
counted out when Bennett’s second Ole Pfotts Wcttstcin threw in the
towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of
the public who broke through the ringropcs and fairly mobbed him

with delight. , . . l .

—He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he s

running a concert tour now up in the north.

— He is, says Joe. Isn’t he?

303

— Who? says Bloom. .Ah, yes, That’s quite true. Yes, a kind of
summer tour, you see. Just a holiday.

— Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn’t she? says Joe.

— .My Wife? says Bloom. She’s singing, yes. I think it will be a
success too. He’s an excellent man to organise. Excellent.

Hoho begob, says I to myself, says I. That explains the milk in the
cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal’s chest. Blazes doing the
tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger’s son off
Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government
to fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water
rate, .Mr Boylan. You what? The water rate, Mr Boylan. You
whatwhat? 1 hat s the bucko that’ll organise her, take my tip. ’Twixt
me and you Caddcrecsh.

Pride of Calpe’s rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy.
There grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the
air. The gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives
knew and bowed. I he chaste spouse of Leopold is she: Marion of the
bountiful bosoms.

And lo, there entered one of the clan of the O’Molloys, a comely
hero of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty’s counsel
learned in the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of
Lambert.

— Hello, Ned.

—Hello, Alf.

— Hello, Jack.

— Hello, Joe.

— God save you, says the citizen.

—Save you kindly, saysj. J. What’ll it be, Ned?

— Half one, says Ned.

SoJ.J. ordered the drinks.

— Were you round at the court? says Joe.

— Yes, says J. J. He’ll square that, Ned, says he.

— Hope so, says Ned.

!Sow what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury
list and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in
otubbs’s. Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank
glass in their eye, drinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and
garnishee orders. Pawning his gold watch in Cun^mins of Francis
street where no-one would know him in the private office when I was

304

there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What s your
name, sir? DXinnc, says he. Ay, and done, says I. Gob, he 11 come
home by weeping cross one of these days, I’m thinking.

Oid you see that bloody lunatic Breen round there, says Alf.

U. p. up.

— Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.

— Ay, says Ned, and he wanted right go wrong to address the court
only Corny Kcllcher got round him telling him to get the handwriting
examined first.

— Ten thousand pounds, says .Alf laughing. God I d give anything

to hear him before a judge and jury.

—Was it you did it, Alf? says Joe. The truth, the whole truth and

nothing but the truth, so help you Jimnty Johnson.

Me? says Alf. Don't cast your nasturtiums on my character.

—Whatever statement you make, says Joe, will be taken down in
evidence against you.

Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is

not compos mentis. U. p. up.

—Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he’s
balmy? Look at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has

to get his hat on with a shoehorn?

-Yes, says J.J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indict-
ment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.

—Ha, ha, Alf, says Joe.

—Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, 1 mean his wile.
—Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a

half and half.

—How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he. . . .

—Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that’s neither

fish nor flesh.

—Nor good red herring, says Joe.

—That what’s I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know

what that is. i • j u

Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explained he

meant, on account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round

after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that

bloody povcitystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping

him, bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after

she married him because a cousin of his old fellow’s was pew opener

to the pope. Picture of him on the wall with his smashall swecncy’s
moustaches. The signor Brini from Summerhill, the cyetallyano,
papal zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss
street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and
passages, at seven shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of
breastplates bidding dehance to the world.

— And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held
to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole.
In my opinion an action might lie.

Six and cightpcncc, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us
drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won’t be let even do that much
itself.

— Well, good health, Jack, says Ned.

— Good health, Ned, says J. J.

— There he is again, says Joe.

— Where? says Alf.

And begob there he was passing the door with his books under
his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kcllcher with his wall
eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying
to sell him a secondhand coffin.

— How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe.

— Remanded, says J. J.

One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James
Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers
saying he’d give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do
you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody
barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the
county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there
was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witness-
box with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for
two quid.

— Who tried the case? says Joe.

— Recorder, says Ned.

— Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two
eyes.

— Heart as big as a lion, says Ned. Tell him a talc of woe about
arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he’ll
dissolve in tears on the bench.

— Ay, says Alf. Reuben J. was bloody lucky he didn’t clap him in

306

the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumlcy that’s minding
stones for the corporation there near Butt bridge.

And he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:

A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How

many children? Ten, did you say?

— Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid!

And a wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court

immediately, sir. No, sir, I’ll make no order for payment. How dare
you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor
hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case.

And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed
goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and
Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being
then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges
repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in
his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews sitting
without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the
claims of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the
will propounded and final testamentary disposition in re the real and
personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased
versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to
the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer.
And he sat him there about the hour of five o clock to administer the
law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to
be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat
with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of lar, for every tribe
one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the
tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and
of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe ot
Dermol and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of
the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve
good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on
rood that they should well and truly try and true dclivrance make in
the issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner
at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help
them God and kiss the books. And they rose in their scats, those
twelve of lar, and they swore by the name of Him who is from ever-
lasting that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway the
minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep one whom the

307

sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in consequence of informa-
tion received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would take

of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he
was a malefactor.

—Those arc nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland
filling tlie country with bugs.

So Bloom lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Joe
telling him he needn’t trouble about that little matter till the first but
if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Joe swore high
and holy by this and by that he’d do the devil and all.

—Because you see, says Bloom, for an advertisement you must have
repetition. That’s the whole secret.

— Rely on me, says Joe.

—Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland.
We want no more strangers in our house.

— O I'm sure that will be all right, Hynes, says Bloom. It’s just
that Keyes you see.

— Consider that done, says Joe.

— Very kind of you, says Bloom.

— The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them
come in. We brought them. The adulteress and her paramour brought
the Saxon robbers here.

— Decree msi^ says J. J.

And Bloom letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a
spider’swcbinthe corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling after
him and the old dog at his feet looking upto knowwho to bite and when.

—A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that’s what’s the cause of
all bur misfortunes.

—And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the Police Gazette
with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint.

— Give us a squint at her, says I.

And what was it only one of the smutty yankce pictures Terry
borrows oflF of Corny Kelleher. Secrets for enlarging your private
parts. Misconduct of society belle. Norman W. Tupper, wealthy
Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer
Taylor. Belle in her bloomers misconducting herself and her fancy
man feeling for her tickles and Norman W. Tupper bouncing in with
his peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the
loop with officer Taylor.

308

— O Jakcrs, Jenny, says Joe, how short your shirt is!

— There’s hair, Joe, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef
off of that one, what?

So anyhow in came John Wyse Nolan and Lcnehan with him with
a face on him as long as a late breakfast.

— Well, says the citizen, what’s the latest from the scene of action?
What did those tinkers in the cityhall at their caucus meeting decide
about the Irish language?

O’Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to
the puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit
of that which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most
obedient city, second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and
there, after due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had
taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring
once more into honour among mortal men the winged speech of the
seadivided Gael.

— It’s on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal
Sassenachs and their patois.

So J. J. puts in a word doing the toff about one story was good till
you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy putting
your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to
impeach a nation and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and
botheration and their colonics and their civilisation.

— Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with
them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the
bloody thicklugged sons of whores’ gctsl No music and no art and
no literature worthy of the name. Any civilisation they have they
stoic from us. Tonguctied sons of bastards’ ghosts.

— The European family, says J. J. . .

—They’re not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with
Kevin Egan of Paris. You wouldn’t see a trace of them or their
language anywhere in Europe except in a cabinet d aisance.

And says John Wyse:

— Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

And says Lcnehan that knows a bit of the lingo:

— Conspuez Us Anglais! Perjide Albion!

He said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands
the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan
Lamb Dearg Abu, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of

309

mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of
alabaster silent as the deathless gods.

— What’s up with you, says I to Lcnchan. You look like a fellow
that had lost a bob and found a tanner.

— Gold cup, says he.

— Who won, Mr Lenehan? says Terry.

— says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the

rest nowhere.

— And Bass’s mare? says Terry.

— Still running, says he. We’re all in a cart. Boylan plunged two
quid on my tip Sceptre for himself and a lady friend

— I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on Zinjandel that Mr
Flynn gave me. Lord Howard dc Walden’s.

— Twenty to one, says Lenehan. Such is life in an outhouse.
Throwanay, says he. Takes the biscuit and talking about bunions.
Frailty, thy name is Sceptre.

So he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to sec if there
was anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing
his luck with his mangy snout up. Old mother Hubbard went to the
cupboard.

— Not there, my child, says he.

—Keep your pecker up, says Joe. She’d have won the money only
for the other dog.

And J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Bloom
sticking in an odd word.

— Some people, says Bloom, can see the mote in others* eyes but
they can’t see the beam in their own.

— Raimeis, says the citizen. There’s no-one as blind as the fellow
that won’t see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing
twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost
tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world 1
And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our
flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick
lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough
and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard dc Lyon and
our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the
Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide
\W)rld! Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars
eft Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with

310

gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carincn?
Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrcnsis. W'ine, peltries,
Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our far-
famed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain
offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters.
What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and
our ruined hearths? And the beds of the Barrow and Shannon they
won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog to make us all
die of consumption.

As treeless as Portugal wcTl be soon, says John Wysc, or Heligo-
land with its one tree if something is not done to rcafiorest the land.
Larches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family arc going fast. I was

reading a report of lord Castletown $• . .

— Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the
chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage.
Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills

of Eire, O,

‘—Europe has its eyes on you, says Lcncham*

The fashionable international world attended en masse this afternoon
at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse dc Ncaulan, grand high
chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of
Pine Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovcbirch, Mrs
Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazelcyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Mi^ Dorothy
Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twclvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene. Mrs Helen
Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive
Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra
Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Eldcrflowcr, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace
Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses
LUian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-
Mossc, Miss May Hawthorne. Mrs Gloriana Palme Mrs Liana
Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of
Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride
who was given away by her father, the M Conifer of the Glands,
looked exquisitely charming in a creation carried out m green mer-
cerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed w^th a
yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued
fringe, the scheme being relieved by brctcll« and hip insertions o
acorn bronze. The maids of honour. Miss Larch Conifer and Miss
Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in

the same tone, a dainty motij of plume rose being worked into the
pleats in a pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques
in the form of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor
presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to
the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking
arrangement of fVooJman, spare that tree at the conclusion of the
service. On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre in Horto after the
papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of
hazelnuts, bccchmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollybcrrics,
mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer
Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest.

— And our eyes arc on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade
with Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those
mongrels were pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the
winedark waterw'ay.

— And will again, says Joe.

— And with the help of the holy mother of God wc will again, says
the citizen, clapping his thigh. Our harbours that arc empty will be
full again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in
the kingdom of Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the
wide world with a fleet of masts of the Galway Lynches and the
Cavan O’Reillys and the O’Kcnnedys of Dublin when the earl of
Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles the Fifth
himself. And will again, says he, when the first Irish battleship is
seen breasting the waves with our own flag to the fore, none of your
Henry Tudor’s harps, no, the oldest flag afloat, the flag of the province
of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue field, the three
sons of Milesius.

And he took the last swig out of the pint, Moya. All wind and
piss like a lanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much
as his bloody life is w'orth to go down and address his tall talk to the
assembled multitude in Shanagoldcn where he daren’t show his nose
with the Molly Maguires looking for him to let daylight through
him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant.

— Hear, hear to that, says John Wyse. What will you have?

— An imperial yeomanry, says Lenehan, to celebrate the occasion.

—Half one, Terry, says John Wyse, and a hands up. Terry 1 Arc
you asleep?

— Yes.sir, saysTerry. Smallwhisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir.

312

Hanging over the bloody paper with Alt looking for spicy bit>
instead of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match,
trying to crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other witli
his head down like a bull at a gate. And another one: Black Beast
Burned in Omaha, Ga. A lot of Dcadwood Dicks in slouch hats and
they firing at a sambo strung up on a tree with his longue out and a
bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea alter
and electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their job.

— But w’hat about the fighting navy, says Ned, that keeps our foes
at bay?

— ril tell you w'hat about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is.
Read the revelations that’s going on in the papers about flogging on
the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself
Disgusted One.

So he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the
crew of tars and officers and rearadmirals draw n up in cocked hats and
the parson with his protestant biblc to witness punishment and a
young lad brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down
on the buttend of a gun.

A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir

John Beresford called it but the modern God’s Englishman calls it
caning on the breech.

And says John Wysc:

*Xis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.

Then he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long
cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor
lad till he yells meila murder.

That’s your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses

the earth. The fellows that never will be slaves, with the only here-
ditary chamber on the face of God’s earth and their land in the hands
of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball barons. That s the great empire
they boast about of drudges and whipped serfs.

— On which the sun never rises, says Joe.

—And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The
unfortunate yahoos believe it.

They believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon
earth and in Jacky Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy
boast, born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, w^as
scarified, flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he

3*3

arose again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his bcamend till
further orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid.

— But, says Bloom, isn’t discipline the same everywhere? I mean
wouldn’t it be the same here if you put force against force?

Didn’t I tell you? As true as I’m drinking this porter if he was at
his last gasp he’d try to downfacc you that dying was living.

— We’ll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater
Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in
the black 47. I'heir mudeabins and their shielings by the roadside
were laid low by the batteringram and the Times rubbed its hands and
told the whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in
Ireland as redskins in America. Even the grand Turk sent us his
piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while
the land was full of crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in
Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty
thousand of them died in the coffinships. But those that came to the
land of the free remember the land of bondage. And they will come
again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of Granuailc, the
champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan.

— Perfectly true, says Bloom. But iny point was. . .

— We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Ned. Since
the poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and
landed at Killala.

— Ay, says John Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged
us against the WilHamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick
and the broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and
Spain, the wild geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O’Donnell,
duke of Tetuan in Spain, and Ulysses Browne of Camus that was field-
marshal to Maria Teresa. But what did we ever get for it?

— The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing mastcrsl Do you
know what it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland.
Aren’t they trying to make an Entente cordiale now at Tay Pay’s
dinnerparty with perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they
always were?

— Conspuez les Franfais^ says Lenehan, nobbling his beer.

— And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Joe, haven’t
we had enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from
George the elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch
that’s dead?

Icsus, I had to laugh at the wav he carnc out with that about tlu
old one with the winkers on her blind drunk in her roval palace ever\
night of God, old \’ic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her
coachman carting lier up body and bones to roll into bed and she pull-
ing him by the whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about
E/tren on the Rhine and come where the boose is cheaper.

— Well! saysj. J. W’e liaxe Edward the peacemaker now.

— Tell that to a fool, savs the citizen. There’s a bloody sight more
pox than pax about that bovo. Edward Guclph-W'ettinl

— And what do vou think, says Joe, of the holy boys, the priests
and bishops of Ireland doing up his rooni in Mavnooth in his Satanic
Majesty’s racing colours and sticking up pictures ot all the horses his
jockeys rode. The carl of Dublin, no less.

— They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says
little Alf'

And says J. J.:

— Considerations of space inHucnccd their lordship’s decision.

— Will you try another, citizen? says Joe.

— Yes, sir, says he, I will.

— You? says Joe.

— Beholden to you, Joe, says I. May your shadow' never grow less.

— Repeat that dose, says Joe.

Bloom was talking and talking with John Wysc and he quite
excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old
plumcycs rolling about.

— Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it.
Perpetuating national hatred among nations.

— But do you know w’hat a nation means? says John Wyse.

— Yes, says Bloom.

— What is it? says John Wysc.

— A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the
same place.

—By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if that’s so I m a nation for
I’m living in the same place for the past five years.

So of course everyone had a laugh at Bloom and says he, trying to
muck out of it:

— Or also living in different places.

— That covers my case, says Joe.

—What is your nation if I may ask, says the citizen.

3*5

— Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.

The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet

and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the
corner.

—After you with the push, Joe, says he, taking out his handker-
chief to swab himself dry.

Here you are, citizen, says Joe. Take that in your right hand
and repeat after me the following words.

The muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish
facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og
MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully
produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell
on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein
one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn present-
ing to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol a bogoak
sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the
British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle
from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the cmunctory field,
showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns
and seats of learning and malcdictive stones, arc as wonder-
fully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illu-
minators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the
time of the Barmecides. Glcndalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney,
the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve
Pins, Ireland’s Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the
brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited),
Lough Neagh’s banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde’s tower, the Mapas
obelisk. Sir Patrick Dun’s hospital. Cape Clear, the glen of Ahcrlow,
Lynch s castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at
Loughlinstown, Tullamorc jail, Castlcconncl rapids, Kilballymac-
shonakill, the cross at Monastcrboice, Jury’s Hotel, S. Patrick’s
Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley’s
hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock
of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Henry Street Warehouse, Fingal’s
these moving scenes arc still there for us today rendered
more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over
them and by the rich incrustations of time.

—Shove us over the drink, says I. Which is which?

That s mine, says Joe, as the devil said to the dead policeman.

316

— And I belong to a race too, says Bloom, that is hated and per-
secuted. Also now. This very moment. I'his very instant.

Gob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar.

— Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking
what belongs to us by right. At this very moment, says he,
putting up his fist, sold by auction olf in Morocco like slaves or
cattles.

— Arc you talking about the new Jerusalcmi* says the citizen.

— Tm talking about injustice, says Bloom.

— Right, says John Wysc. Stand up to it then with force like men.

That’s an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet.
Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he’d
adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse s apron
on him. And then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the
opposite, as limp as a wet rag.

—But it’s no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That’s
not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows
that it’s the very opposite of that that is really life.

— What? says Alf.

— Love, says Bloom. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go
now, says he to John Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see
if Martin is there. If he comes just say I’ll be back in a second. Just
a moment.

Who’s hindering you? And oflF he pops like greased lightning.

—A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love.

—Well, says John Wyse, isn’t that what we’re told? Love your

neighbours.

—That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto.
Love, Moya! He’s a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet.

Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable
14A loves Mary Kelly. Gcrty MacDowell loves the boy that has the
bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up k^y
Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old
Mr Vcrschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with
the turnedin eye. The man in the brown maantosh loves a lady who
is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs
Norman W. Tapper loves officer Taylor. You love a cert^n person.
And this person loves that other person because everybody loves
somebody but God loves everybody.

3*7

— Well, Joe, says I, your very good health and song. More power,
citizen.

— Hurrah, there, says Joe.

— 1 he blessing of God and Mary and Patrick on you, says the
citizen.

And he ups with his pint to wet his whistle.

— \\ e know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your
pocket. What about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that
put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the
bible text God is love pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The
biblc! Did you read that skit in the United Irishman today about that
Zulu chief that’s visiting England?

— What’s that? says Joe.

So the citizen takes up one of his paiaphcrnalia papers and he starts
reading out:

— A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was
presented yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abcakuta by Gold
Stick in Waiting, Lord Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the
heartfelt thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in
his dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion
of which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, freely
translated by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod
Bareboncs, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised
the cordial relations existing between Abeakuta and the British
Empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest possessions an
illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God and the secret of
England’s greatness, graciously presented to him by the white chief
woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the
august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup
of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast Black and White from the skull of
his immediate predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed
Forty Warts, after which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis
and signed his mark in the visitors’ book, subsequently executing an
old Abeakutic wardance, in the course of which he swallowed several
knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the girl hands.

—Widow woman, says Ned, I wouldn’t doubt her. Wonder did he
put that bible to the same use as I would.

—Same only more so, says Lenehan. And thereafter in that fruitful
land the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly.

— Is that by Griffith? says John \N’vse.

— No, says the citizen. It’s not signed Shanganagli. It’s only
initialled: P.

— And a very good initial too, says Joe.

— That’s how it’s worked, says the citizen. I'rade follows the dag.

— Well, says J. J., if they’re any worse than those Belgians in the
Congo Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a
man what’s this his name is?

— Casement, says the citizen. He’s an Irishman.

— Yes, that’s the man, says J.J. Raping the women and girls and
flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they
can out of them.

— I know where he’s gone, says Lenchan, cracking his fingers.

— Who? says I.

— Bloom, says he, the courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on
Throwa-way and he’s gone to gather in the shekels.

— Is it that whitcyed kaffir.^ says the citizen, that never backed a
horse in anger in his life.

That’s where he’s gone, says Lenchan. I met Bantam Lyons going
to back that horse only I put him off it and he told me Bloom gave
him the tip. Bet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five
on. He’s the only man in Dublin has it. A dark horse.

— He’s a bloody dark horse himself, says Joe.

— Mind, Joe, says I. Show us the entrance out.

— There you are, says Terry.

Goodbye Ireland I’m going to Gort. So I just went round to the
back of the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five)
while I was letting off my {Throwa-way twenty to) letting off my load
gob says I to myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of
Joe and one in Slattery’s off) in his mind to get off the mark to
(hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the (dark
horse) Pisscr Burke was telling me card party and letting on the child
was sick (gob, must have done about a gallon) ilabbyarsc of a wife
speaking down the tube she's better or she's (owl) all a plan so he could
vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading
without a licence (ow!) Ireland my nation says he (hoiki phthook!)
never be up to those bloody (there’s the last of it) Jerusalem (ahl)
cuckoos.

So anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, John Wysc

3*9

saying it was Bloom gave the idea for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in
his paper all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the
taxes off of the Government and appointing consuls all over the world
to walk about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking
up the show. Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the
likes of that bloody mouseabout. Mr Bloom w’ith his argol bargol.
And his old fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Mcthusalcm
Bloom, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with the prussic
acid after he swamping the country with his baubles and his penny
diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms. Any amount of money
advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No security. Gob
he’s like Lanty MacHale’s goat that’d go a piece of the road w’ith
every one.

—Well, it’s a fact, says John Wyse. And there’s the man now that’ll
tell you about it, .Martin Cunningham.

Sure enough the castle car drove up with Martin on it and Jack
Power with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner
out of the collector general’s, an orangeman Blackburn does have on
the registration and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting
around the country at the king’s expense.

Our travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their
palfreys.

— Ho, varlct! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the
party. Saucy knave! To us!

So saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice.

Mine host came forth at the summons girding him with his tabard.

— Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow.

— Bestir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our
steeds. And for ourselves give us of your best for ifaith we need it.

— Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a
bare larder. I know not what to offer your lordships.

— How now, fellow.^ cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant
countenance, so servest thou the king’s messengers. Master Taptun?

An instantaneous change overspread the landlord’s visage.

— p*'y mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the
kings messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for
aught. The king s friends (God bless His Majesty!) shall not go-afast-
ing in my house I warrant me.

320

— Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty
trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us?

Mine host bowed again as he made answer:

— What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some
collops of venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog’s bacon, a
boar’s head with pistachios, a bason ot jolly custard, a medlar tansy
and a flagon of old Rhenish?

— Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios!

— Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a
bare larder, quotha! ’Tis a merry rogue.

So in comes Martin asking where was Bloom.

— Where is he? says Lcnehan. Defrauding widows and orphans.

— Isn’t that a fact, says John Wyse, what I was felling the citizen
about Bloom and the Sinn Fein?

— Thai’s so, says Martin. Or so they allege.

— Who made those allegations? says Alf.

— I, says Joe. I’m the alligator.

— And after all, says John Wyse, why can’t a jew love his country
like the next fellow?

—Why not? says J. J., when he’s quite sure which country it is.

—Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what
the hell is he? says Ned. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton.

—We don’t want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian.

— Who is Junius? says J. J.

— He’s a perverted jew, says Martin, from a place in Hungary and
it was he drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system.
We know that in the castle.

— Isn’t he a cousin of Bloom the dentist? says Jack Power.

— Not at all, says Martin. Only namesakes. His name was Virag.
The father’s name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deed poll,
the father did.

That’s the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island of

saints and sagesl

— Well, they’re still waiting for their redeemer, says Marlin. For
that matter so are we.

Yes, says J.J., and every male that’s born they think it may be

their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe,
till he knows if he’s a father or a mother.

— Expecting every moment will be his next, says Lenehan.

3*1

Y

— O, by God, ^ays Xcd, you should have seen Bloom before that
son ot his that died was born. I met him one day in the south city
markets buying a tin ot N'eave’s food six weeks before the wife was
delivered.

— F,n xentre sa mere^ says J. J.

— Do you call that a man? says the citizen.

— I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Joe.

— Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Jack Pow-er.

— And who does he suspect? says the citizen.

Gob, there’s many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed
middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a
month with headache like a totty with her courses. Do you know
what I’m telling you? It’d be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow
the like of that and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide,
so it would. 1 hen sloping off with his five quid without putting up a
pint of stuff like a man. Give us your blessing. Not as much as would
blind your eye.

— Charity to the neighbour, says Martin. But where is he? We
can’t wait.

— A wolf in sheep's clothing, says the citizen. That’s what he is.
Virag from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God.

— Have you time for a brief libation, Martin? says Ned.

— Only one, says Martin. We must be quick. J. J. and S.

— You Jack? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry.

— Saint Patrick would w'ant to land again at Ballykinlar and convert
us, says the citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our
shores.

— Well, says Marlin, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is
my prayer.

— Amen, says the citizen.

— And I’rn sure he will, says Joe.

And at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with
acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and sub-
deacons, the blessed company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors
and guardians and monks and frairs: the monks of Benedict of Spoleto,
Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans, Oratorians
and Vallombrosans, and the frairs of Augustine, Brigittincs, Pre-
monstratesians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the children of Peter Nolasco:
and therewith from Carmel' mount the children of Elijah prophet led

322

by Albert bishop and by I crcsa ot Avila, calccd and other: and triar:.
brown and grey, sons ot poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers, nhniincs
and observants and the daughters of Clara: and tlie sons ot Dominic,
the friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent: and the monks of S.
Wolstan: and Ingatius his children: and the confraternity of the
Christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Kicc.
And after came all saints and martyrs, virgins and contessors: S. Cyr
and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas ot Sinope
and S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix dc Cantalice and S. Simon
Styliics and S. Stephen Protomartvr and S. John ot God and S.
Fcrreol and S. Leugarde and S.Thcodotus and S. V ulmar and S.
Richard and S. Vincent dc Paul and S. Martin of Todi and S. Martin
of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S. Denis and S. Cornelius
and S. Leopold and S. Bernard and S. Terence and S. Edward and S.
Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous and 5.
Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S.
Synonymous and S. Laurence O’ Toole and S. James ot Dingle and
Compostclla and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Cclestinc and
S. Colman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and S. Senan
and S. Fachtna and S. Columbanous and S. Gall and S. Furscy and
S. Fintan and S. Fiacre and S. John Nepomuc and S. Thomas Aquinas
and S. Ives of Brittany and S. Michan and S. Herman-Joseph and tlie
three patrons of holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus
Kostka and S. John Berchmans and the saints Ger\'asius, Sei^'asius
and Bonifacius and S. Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canicc ot Kilkenny
and S. Jarlath of Tuam and S. Finbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun and
Brother Aloysius Pacificus and Brother Louis Bellicosus and the saints
Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and S. Martha of Bethany and S. Mary
of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. Brigid and S. Attracta and S. Dympna
and S. Ita and S. Marion Calpcnsis and the Blessed Sister Teresa ot the
Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S. Ursula with
eleven thousand virgins. And all came with nimbi and aureoles and
gloriac, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive crowns, in
robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies,
inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in
a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies, buckshot,
beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladlcs, stars, snakes, anvils,
boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags horns, watertight
boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills,

323

unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson’s Pillar, Henry
Street, Mary Street, Capel Street, Little Britain Street, chanting the
introit in Rpiphania Domini which beginneth Surge, illuminare and
thereafter most sweetly the gradual Omnes which saith c/e Sa6a venient
they did divers wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to
life, multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering
various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting and fulfilling the
scriptures, blessing and prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of
cloth of gold came the reverend Father O’Flynn attended by Malachi
and Patrick. And when the good fathers had reached the appointed
place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 little
Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed
for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises,
the celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioncd windows
and the groynes and the vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the
pediments and the cornices and the engrailed arches and the spires
and the cupolas and sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water
and prayed that God might bless that house as he had blessed the house
of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His light to
inhabit therein. And entering he blessed the viands and the beverages
and the company of all the blessed answered his prayers.

— Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.

— calum et t err am.

— Dominus vobiscum.

— Et cum spiritu tuo.

And he laid his hands upon the blessed and gave thanks and he
prayed and they all with him prayed;

—~Deus, cuius verbo sanctijicantur omnia, benedictionem tuam e^unde
super creatures istas: et prasta ut quisquis eis secundum legem et volun-
tatem Tuam cum gratiarum actione usus^uerit per invocationem sanctissimi
nominis Tui corporis sanitatem et anima tutelam TV auctore percipiat per
Christum Dominum nostrum.

— And so say all of us, says Jack.

— Thousand a year, Lambert, says Crofton or Crawford.

— Right, says Ned, taking up his John Jameson. And butter for
fish.

I was just looking round to sec who the happy thought would strike
when be damned but in he comes again letting on to be in a hell of
a hurry.

324

— I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you. I
hope I’m not. . .

— No, says Martin, we’re ready.

Courthouse niy eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and
silver. Mean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear!
There’s a jew for you! All for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat.
Hundred to five.

— Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen.

— Beg your pardon, says he.

— Come on boys, says Martin, seeing it was looking blue. Come
along now'.

— Don’t tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of him.
It’s a secret.

And the bloody dog woke up and let a growl.

— Bye bye all, says .Martin.

And he got them out as quick as he could, Jack Power and Crofton
or whatever you call him and him in the middle of them letting on to
be all at sea up with them on the bloody jaunting car.

Off with you, says Martin to the jarvey.

The milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden
poop, the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood
off forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many
comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging
to the sides of the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth
the cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of his
wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he
binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men
whenas they ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair.
Even so did they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the
undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of their foam:
and the bark clave the waves.

But begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the
citizen gelling up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the
dropsy and he cursing the curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and
candle in Irish, spitting and spatting out of him and Joe and little Alf
round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him.

— Let me alone, says he.

And begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he
hawls out of him:

325

— I hree cheers for Israel!

Arrali, sit down on tlie parliamentary side of your arse for Christ’
sake and don’t be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus,
there’s alw ays some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder
about bloody nothing. Gob, it’d turn the porter sour in your guts, so
It would.

And all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and
-Martin telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and
.-\lt and Joe at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews
and the loafers calling for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him
to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer W’ith a
patch o\'cr his eye starts singing IJ the man in the moon was ajew^jew,
ieiv and a slut shouts out of her:

— Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!

And says he:

#

— Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mcrcadantc and
Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your
God.

— He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive ahead.

— Whose Cod? says the citizen.

— Well, his uncle was a jew’, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ
was a jew like me.

Gob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.

— By Jesus, says he, I’ll brain that bloody jewman for using the
holy name. By Jesus, I’ll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuit-
box here.

— ;Stop! Stop 1 says Joe.

A large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances
from the metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in their thousands
to bid farewell to Nagyasdgos uram Lip6ti Virag, late of Messrs
Alexander Thom’s, printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his
departure for the distant clime of Sz&zharminczbrojdgulyds-Dugul&s
(Meadow of Murmuring Waters). The ceremony which went off
with great Mat was characterised by the most affecting cordiality. An
illuminated scroll of ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was
presented to the distinguished phcnomenologistyDn behalf of a large
section of the community and was accompanied by the gift of a silver
casket, tastefully executed in the style of ancient Celtic ornament, a
work which reflects every credit on the makers, Messrs Jacob agus

Jacob. The departing guc.st was the recipient ot a hearty ovation,
many of those who were present being visibly moved when the select
orchestra of Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of Come Back
to Eriv, followed immediately by Rakoezy's March. Tarbarrels and
bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four seas on the summits
of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock .Mountain, Sugarloaf, Bray Head,
the mountains of Mourne, the Galtecs, the Ox and Donegal and
Sperrin peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills, the
reeks of M’Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bcrnagh and Slievc
Bloom. Amid cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering
cheers fron^ a big muster ot henchmen on the distant Cambrian and
Caledonian hills, the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away
saluted by a final floral tribute from the representatives of the fair sex
who were present in large numbers while, as it proceeded down the
river, escorted by a flotilla of barges, the flags of the Ballast office and
Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical
power station at the Pigconhousc. llsszontldtJsra, kedvis bardtonl
Visszontldtdsral Gone but not forgotten.

Gob, the devil wouldn’t stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin
anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and
he shouting like a stuck pig, as good as any bloody play in the Queen’s
royal theatre.

— Where is he till I murder him?

And Ned and J. G. paralysed with the laughing.

—Bloody wars, says I, I’ll be in for the last gospel.

But as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag’s head round the

other way and off with him.

— Hold on, citi2cn, says Joe. Stop.

Begob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of
God the sun was in his eyes or he’d have left him tor dead. Gob, he
near sent it into the county Longford. The bloody nag took fright
and the old mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace
shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along the street.

The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The
observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth
grade of Mercalli’s scale, and there is no record extant of a sinular
seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of 1534, the
year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have
been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn s Quay ward

327

and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyonc acres, two
roods and one square pole or perch. .All the lordly residences in the
Vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice
Itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important legal debates
were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath which it is to be
feared all the occupants have been buried alive. From the reports of
eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by
a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An article
of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk of
the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold
handle with the engraved initials, coat of arms and house number of
the erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir Frederick
Falkincr, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered by search parties
in remote parts of the island, respectively, the former on the third
basaltic ridge of the giant's causeway, the latter embedded to the
extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay
near the old head of Kinsalc. Other eyewitnesses depose that they
observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling
through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed
south west by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being
hourly received from all parts of the different continents and
the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a
special missa pro dejunctis shall be celebrated simultaneously by the
ordinaries of each and every cathedral church of all the episcopal
dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage
of the souls of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly
called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of dibris^
human remains etc hzi been e jtrusied to Messrs Michael Meade and
Son, 159, Great Brunswick Street, and Messrs T. C. Martin, 77, 78,
79 and 80, North Wall, assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of
Cornwall’s light infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H.,
rear admiral the right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal Habeas
Corpus Anderson K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K. C. B., M. P., J. P.,
M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H., M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc.,
P. L. G., F. T. C. D., F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I.

You never saw the like of It in all your born puff. Gob, if he got
that lottery ticket on the side of his poll he’d remember the gold cup,
he would so, but begob the citizen would have been lagged for assault
and battery and Joe for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life

328

by furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O, Jesus, he
did. And he let a volley of oaths after him.

— Did I kill him, says he, or what?

And he shouting to the bloody dog:

— After him, Garry! After him, boy!

And the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old
shccpfacc on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his
lugs back for all he w'as bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb.
Hundred to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise
you.

When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they
beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. -And they
beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness,
having raiment as of the sun, fair as the tnoon and terrible that for awe
they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven,
calling; Elijah! Elijah! And he answered with a main cry: Abha!
Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid
clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of
fortyfive degrees over Donohoc’s in Little Green Street like a shot
off a shovel.

•k The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its
mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the
last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand,
on the proud promontory of dear old How-th guarding as ever the
waters of the bay, on the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore
and, last but not least, on the quiet church whence there streamed
forth at times upon the stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in
her pure radiance a beacon ever to the storm-tossed heart of man,
Mary, star of the sea.

The three girl friends were seated on the rocks, enjoying the evening
scene and the air which was fresh but not too chilly. Many a time
and oft were they wont to come there to that favourite nook to have a
cosy chat beside the sparkling waves and discuss matters feminine.
Cissy CafFrey and Edy Boardman with the baby in the pushcar and
Tommy and Jacky Caffrey, two little curlyhcadcd boys, dressed in

329

^;^iior suits with caps to match and the name H. M. S. Belleisle printed
on both. For Tommy and Jacky Caffrey were twins, scarce four years
old and A cry noisy and spoiled twins sometimes but for all that darling
little fellows with bright merry faces and endearing ways about them.
I hcy were dabbling in the sand with their spades and buckets, build-
ing castles as children do, or playing with their big coloured ball,
happy as the day was long. And Edy Boardman was rocking the
chubby baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman
fairly chuckled with delight. He was but eleven months and nine
days old and, though still a tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp
his first babyish words. Cissy Caffrey bent over him to tease his fat
little plucks and the dainty dimple in his chin.

Now, baby. Cissy Caffrey said. Say out big, big. I want a
drink of water.

And baby prattled after her:

— A jink a jink a jawbo.

Cissy Caffrey cuddled the wee chap for she was awfully fond of
children, so patient with little sufferers and Tommy Caffrey could
never be got to take his castor oil unless it was Cissy Caffrey that held
his nose and promised him the scatty heel of the loaf of brown bread
with golden syrup on. What a persuasive pow'er that girl had! But
to be sure baby was as good as gold, a perfect little dote in his new
fancy bib. None of your spoilt beauties, Flora MacFlimsy sort, was
Cissy Caffrey. A truerhearted lass never drew the breath of life,
always with a laugh in her gipsylike eyes and a frolicsome word on
her cherryripe red lips, a girl lovable in the extreme. And Edy
Boardman laughed too at the quaint language of little brother.

But just then there w'as a slight altercation between Master Tommy
and Master Jacky, Boys will be boys and our two twins were no
exception to this golden rule. The apple of discord was a certain
castle of sand which Master Jacky had built and Master Tommy
w'ould have it right go wTong that it was to be architecturally improved
by a frontdoor like the Martello tower had. But if Master Tommy
was headstrong Master Jacky was sclfwilled too and, true to the
maxim that every little Irishman’s house is his castle, he fell upon his
haled rival and to such purpose that the wouldbe assailant came to
grief and (alas to relate 1) the coveted castle too. Needless to say the
cries of discomfited Master Tommy drew the attention of the girl
friends.

330

— Come here, Tommy, his sister called imperatively, at once! And
you, Jacky, for shame to throw poor Tomtny in the dirty sand. \V’ait
till I catch you for that.

His eyes misty with unshed tears Master Tommy came at her call
for their big sister’s word was law with the twins. And in a sad plight
he was after his misadventure. His little man-o’-w ar top and unmen-
tionables were full of sand but Cissy was a past mistress in the art of
smoothing over life’s tiny troubles and very quickly not one speck of

sand was to be seen on his smart little suit. Still the blue eyes were

#

glistening w’ith hot tears that would well up so she kissed away the
hurtness and shook her hand at Master Jacky the culprit and said if
she was near him she wouldn’t be far from him, her eyes dancing in
admonition.

— Nasty bold jacky! she cried.

She put an arm round the little mariner and coaxed winningly:

— What’s your name? Butter and cream?

— Tell us who is your sweetheart, spoke Edy Boardman. Is Cissy
your sweetheart?

— Nao, tearful Tommy said.

—Is Edy Boardman your sweetheart? Cissy queried.

— Nao, Tommy said.

— I know, Edy Boardman said none too amiably with an arch
glance from her shortsighted eyes. I know- who is Tommy’s sweet-
heart, Gerty is Tommy’s sweetheart.

— Nao, Tommy said on the verge of tears.

Cissy’s quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she whispered
to Edy Boardman to take him there behind the pushcar where the
gentlemen couldn’t sec and to mind he didn’t w-et his new- tan shoes.

But who was Gerty?

Gerty MacDowcll who was seated near her companions, lost in
thought, gazing far away into the distance, was in very truth as fair a
specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see. She was
pronounced beautiful by all who knew her though, as folks often said,
she w'as more a Giltrap than a MacDowell. Her figure was slight and
graceful, inclining even to fragility but those iron jclloids she had been
taking of late had done her a world of good much better than the
Widow Welch's female pills and she was much better of those dis-
charges she used to get and that tired feeling. The waxen pallor of
her face was almost spiritual in its ivorylUce purity though her rosebud

33 *

mouth was a genuine Cupid’,s bow, Grcckly perfect. Her hands were
ot finely veined alabaster with tapering fingers and as white as lemon
juice and queen of ointments could make them though it was not
true that she used to wear kid gloves in bed or take a milk footbath
either. Bertha Supple told that once to Edy Boardman, a deliberate
lie, when she was black out at daggers drawn with Gerty (the girl
chums had of course their little tiffs from time to time like the rest of
mortals) and she told her not let on whatever she did that it was her
that told her or she’d never speak to her again. No. Honour where
honour is due. There was an innate refinement, a languid queenly
hauteur about Gerty which was unmistakably evidenced in her delicate
hands and higharched instep. Had kind fate but willed her to be
born a gentlewoman of high degree in her own right and had she
only received the benefit of a good education Gerty MacDowell might
easily have held her own beside any lady in the land and have seen
herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and patrician
suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs to her.
Mayhap it was this, the love that might have been, that lent to her
softlyfeatured face at w'hiles a look, tense with suppressed meaning,
that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the beautiful eyes a
charm few could resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery.^
Gerty’s were of the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark
expressive brows. Time was when those brows were not so silkily-
scductivc. It was Madame Vera Verity, directress of the Woman
Beautiful page of the Princess novelette, who had first advised her to
try eycbrowleinc which gave that haunting expression to the eyes, so
becoming in leaders of fashion, and she had never regretted it. Then
there was blushing scientifically cured and how to be tall increase your
height and you have a beautiful face but your nose? That would
suit Mrs Dignam because she had a button one. But Gerty’s crowning
glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. It was dark brown with a
natural wave in it. She had cut it that very morning on account of
the new moon and it nestled about her pretty head in a profusion of
luxuriant clusters and pared her nails too, Thursday for wealth. And
just now at Edy s words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rose-
bloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish

shyness that of a surety God’s fair land of Ireland did not hold her
equal.

For an instant she was silent with rather sad downcast eyes. She

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was about to retort but something checked the words on her tongue.
Inclination prompted her to speak out: dignity told her to be silent.
The pretty lips pouted a while but then she glanced up and broke out
into a joyous little laugh which had in it all the freshness of a young
May morning. She knew right well, no-one better, what made
squinty Edy say that because of him cooling in his attentions when it
w’as simply a lovers’ quarrel. As per usual somebody’s nose was out
of joint about the boy that had the bicycle always riding up and down
in front of her window. Only now his father kept him in the evenings
studying hard to get an exhibition in the intermediate that was on
and he was going to Trinity college to study for a doctor when he
left the high school like his brother W. E. VVylie who was racing in
the bicycle races in Trinity college university. Little recked he
perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart sometimes,
piercing to the core. Yet he was young and perchance he might
learn to love her in time. They were protestants in his family and of
course Gcrty knew Who came first and after Him the blessed Virgin
and then Saint Joseph. But he was undeniably handsome with an
exquisite nose and he was what he looked, every inch a gentleman,
the shape of his head too at the back without his cap on that she would
know anywhere something off the common and the way he turned
the bicycle at the lamp with his hands off the bars and also the nice
perfume of those good cigarettes and besides they were both of a size
and that was why Edy Boardman thought she was so frightfully clever
because he didn’t go and ride up and down in front of her bit of a
garden.

Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary
of Dame Fashion for she felt that there was just a might that he might
be out. A neat blouse of electric blue, selftintcd by dolly dyes (because
it was expected in the Lady's Pictorial that electric blue would be
worn), with a smart vee opening down to the division and kerchief
pocket (in which she always kept a piece of cottonwool scented with
her favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled the sit) and a
navy threcquarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful
figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat of
wideleaved nigger straw contrast trimmed with an underbrim of
cggblue chenille and at the side a butterfly bow to tone. All Tuesday
week afternon she was hunting to match that chenille but at last she
found what she wanted at Clery’s summer sales, the very it, slightly

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shopsoilcd but you would never notice, seven fingers two and a penny.
She did it up all by herself and what joy was hers when she tried it on
then, smiling at the lovely reflection which the mirror gave back to
her! And when she put it on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew
that that would take the shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes
were the newest thing in footwear {Edy Boardman prided herself
that she was very but she never had a foot like Gerty MacDowell,
a five, and never would ash, oak or elm) with patent toecaps and just
one smart buckle at her higharched instep. Her wellturned ankle dis-
played its perfect proportions beneath her skirt and just the proper
amount and no more of her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose
with highspliced heels and wide garter tops. As for undies they were
Gerty s chief care and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears
of sweet seventeen (though Gerty would never sec seventeen again)
can find it in his heart to blame her? She had four dinky sets, with
awfully pretty stitchcry, three garments and nighties extra, and each
set slotted with different coloured ribbons, rosepink, pale blue, mauve
and peagrecn and she aired them herself and blued them when they
came home from the wash and ironed them and she had a brickbat to
keep the iron on because she wouldn’t trust those washerwomen as
far as she d sec them scorching the things. She was wearing the blue
for luck, hoping against hope, her own colour and the lucky colour
too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on her because the
green she wore that day week brought grief because his father brought
him in to study for the intermediate exhibition and because she
thought perhaps he might be out because when she was dressing that
morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out and that
was for luck and lovers’ meetings if you put those things on inside out
so long as it wasn’t of a Friday.

And yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing
sorrow is there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she
would give worlds to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber
where, giving way to tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her
pentup feelings. Though not too much because she knew how to cry
nicely before the mirror. You are lovely, Gerty, it said. The paly light
of evening falls upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Gerty Mac-.
Dowell yearns in vain. Yes, she had known from the first that her
daydream of a marriage has been arranged and the weddingbells ring-
ing for Mrs Reggy Wylie T. C. D. (because the one who married the

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elder brother would be Mrs Wylie) and in the fashionable intelligence
Mrs Gertrude Wylie was wearing a sumptuous confection of grey
trimmed with expensive blue fox was not to be. He was too young
to understand. He would not believe in love, a woman’s birthright.
The night of the party long ago in Stoers’ (he was still in short trousers)
when they were alone and he stole an arm round her waist site wetu
white to the very lips. He called her little one in a strangely husky
voice and snatched a half kiss (the first!) but it was only the end of
her nose and then he hastened from the room with a remark about
refreshments. Impetuous fellow! Strength of character had never
been Rcggy Wylie’s strong point and he who would woo and win
Gcrty MacDowell must be a man among men. But waiting, always
waiting to be asked and it was leap year too and would soon be over.
No prince charming is her beau ideal to lay a rare and wondrous love
at her feet but rather a manly man with a strong quiet face who had
not found his ideal, perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey, and
who would understand, take her in his sheltering arms, strain her to
him in all the strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort her
with a long long kiss. It would be like heaven. For such a one she
yearns this balmy summer eve. With all the heart of her she longs to
be his only, his affianced bride for riches for poor, in sickness in health,
till death us two part, from this to this day forward.

And while Edy Boardman was with little Tommy behind the
pushcar she was just thinking would the day ever come when she
could call herself his little wife to be. Then they could talk about her
till they went blue in the face, Bertha Supple too, and Edy, the spit-
fire, because she would be twenty-two in November. She would care
for him with creature comforts too for Gcrty was womanly wise and
knew that a mere man liked that feeling of homincss. Her griddle-
cakes done to a goldcnbrown hue and queen Ann’s pudding of
delightful crcamincss had won golden opinions from all because slic
had a lucky hand also for lighting a fire, dredge in the fine sclfraising
flour and always stir in the same direction then cream the milk and
sugar and whisk well the white of eggs though she didn’t like the eat-
ing part when there were any people that made her shy and often she
wondered why you couldn’t cat something poetical like violets or
roses and they would have a beautifully appointed drawingroom with
pictures and engravings and tlic photograph of grandpapa Giltrap’s
lovely dog Garryowen that almost talked, it was so human, and chintz

335

covers for the chairs and that silver toastrack in Clcry’s summer jumble
sales like they have in rich houses. He would be tall with broad
shoulders (she had always admired tall men for a husband) with
glistening white teeth under his carefully trimmed sweeping moustache

go on the continent for their honeymoon (three
wonderful w'ceks!) and then, when they settled down in a nice snug
and cosy little homely house, every morning they w'ould both have
brekky, simple but perfectly sci^'ed, for their own two selves and before
he went out to business he would give his dear little wifey a good
hearty hug and gaze for a moment deep down into her eyes.

Edy Boardman asked Tommy CafFrey was he done and he said
yes, so then she buttoned up his little knickerbockers for him and
told him to run off and play w-ith Jacky and to be good now and not
to fight. But Tommy said he wanted the ball and Edy told him no
that baby was playing with the ball and if he took it therc’d be wigs
on the green but Tommy said it was his ball and he wanted his b5l
^d he pranced on the ground, if you please. The temper of him!
O, he was a man already was little Tommy Caffrey since he was out
of pinnies. Edy told him no, no and to be off now with him and she
told Cissy Caffrey not to give in to him.

—You're not my sister, naughty Tommy said. It’s my ball.

But Cissy Caffrey told baby Boardman to look up, look up high
at her finger and she snatched the ball quickly and threw it along the
sand and Tommy after it in full career, having won the day.

— Anything for a quiet life, laughed Ciss.

And she tickled tiny tot’s two cheeks to make him forget and played
here’s the lord mayor, here’s his two horses, here’s his gingerbread
carriage and here he walks in, chinchopper, chinchopper, chin-
chopper chin. But Edy got as cross as two sticks about him getting his
own way like that from everyone always petting him.

—I’d like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I
won’t say.

— On the bcetotectom, laughed Cissy merrily.

Gcrty MacDowell bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of
Cissy saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she’d be ashamed
of her life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Edy Boardman said

she was sure the gentleman opposite heard what she said. But not a
pin cared Ciss.

—Let him! she said with a pert toss of her head and a piquant tilt of

336

her nose. Give it to him too on the same place as quick as I’d look at
him.

Madcap Ciss with her golliwog curls. You had to laugh at her some-
times. For instance when she asked you would you have some more
Chinese tea and jaspberry ram and when she dres^- the jugs too and
the men’s faces on her nails with red ink make you split your sides
or when she wanted to go where you know she said she wanted to run
and pay a visit to the Miss White. That was just like Cissycums.
O, and will you ever forget the evening she dressed up in her father’s
suit and hat and the burned cork moustache and walked down Triton-
villc road, smoking a cigarette? There was none to come up to her
for fun. But she was sincerity itself, one of the bravest and truest
hearts heaven ever made, not one of your twofaced things, too sweet
to be wholesome.

And then there came out upon the air the sound of voices and the
pealing anthem of the organ. It was the men’s temperance retreat
conducted by the missioner, the reverend John Hughes S. J., rosary,
sermon and benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. They were
there gathered together without distinction of social class (and a most
edifying spectacle it was to sec) in that simple fane beside the waves,
after the storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of the
immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, beseeching
her to intercede for them, the old familiar words, holy Mary, holy
virgin of virgins. How sad to poor Geriy’s cars! Had her father only
avoided the clutches of the demon drink, by taking the pledge or
those powders the drink habit cured in Pearson’s Weekly, she might
now be rolling in her carriage, second to none. Over and over had
she told herself that as she mused by the dying embers in a brown
study without the lamp because she hated two lights or oftentimes
gazing out of the window dreamily by the hour at the rain falling on
the rusty bucket, thinking. But that vile dccoaion which has ruined
so many hearths and homes had cast its shadow over her childhood
days. Nay, she had even witnessed in the home circle deeds of
violence caused by intemperance and had seen her own father, a prey
to the fumes of intoxication, forget himself completely for if there was
one thing of all things that Gcrty knew it was the man who lifts his
hand to a woman save in the way of kindness deserves to be branded
as the lowest of the low.

And stUI the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most powerful,

337 z

\’irgin most merciful. And Gerty, wrapt in thought, scarce saw or
heard her companions or the twins at their boyish gambols or the
gentleman off Sandymount green that Cissy Caffrey called the man
that was so like himself passing along the strand taking a short walk.
You never saw him anyway screwed but still and for all that she would
not like him tor a father because he was too old or something or on
account of h^s face (it was a palpable ease of doctor Fell) or his car-
buncly nose with the pimples on it and his sandy moustache a bit
white under his nose. Poor father! With all his faults she loved him
still when he sang Tell me, Mary, how to woo thee or My love and cottage
near Rochelle and they had stewed cockles and lettuce with Lazenby’s
salad dressing for supper and when he sang The moon hath raised with
.Mr Dignam that died suddenly and was buried. Cod have mercy on
him, from a stroke. Her mother’s birthday that was and Charley was
home on his holidays and Tom and Mr Dignam and Mrs and Patsy
and Freddy Dignam and they were to have had a group taken. No-
one would have thought the end was so near. Now- he was laid to
rest. And her mother said to him to let that be a warning to him
for the rest of his days and he couldn’t even go to the funeral on account
of the gout and she had to go into town to bring him the letters and
samples from his office about Catesby’s cork lino, artistic standard
designs, fit for a palace, gives tiptop wear and always bright and
cheery in the home.

A sterling good daughter was Gerty just like a second mother in the
house, a ministering angel too with a little heart worth its weight in
gold. And when her mother had those raging splitting headaches
who was it rubbed on the menthol cone on her forehead but Gerty
though- she didn’t like her mother taking pinches of snuff and that
was the only single thing they ever had words about, taking snuff.
Everyone thought the world of her for her gentle ways. It was Gerty
who turned off the gas at the main every night and it was Gerty who
lacked up on the wall of that place where she never forgot every
fortnight the chlorate of lime Mr Tunney the grocer’s Christmas
almanac the picture of halcyon days where a young gentleman in the
costume they used to wear then with a threecornered hat was offering
a bunch of flowers to his ladylove with oldtime chivalry through her
lattice window. You could sec there was a story behind it. The
colours were done something lovely. She was in a soft clinging white
in a studied attitude and the gentleman was in chocolate and he

looked a thorough aristocrat. She often looked at them dreamily
when there for a certain purpose and felt her own arms that were
white and soft just like hers with the sleeves back and thought about
those times because she had found out in Walkers pronouncing
dictionary that belonged to grandpapa Giltrap about the hah yon
days what they meant.

The twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly
fashion, till at last Master Jacky who was really as bold as brass there
was no getting behind that deliberately kicked the ball as hard as ever
he could down towards the seawcedy rocks. Needless to say poor
Tommy was not slow to voice his dismay but luckily the gentleman in
black who was sitting there by himself came gallantly to the rescue
and intercepted the ball. Our two champions claimed their plaything
with lusty cries and to avoid trouble Cissy Caffrey called to the
gentleman to throw it to her please. 1 he gentleman aimed the ball
once or twice and then threw it up the strand towards Cissy Caffrey
but it rolled down the slope and stopped right under Gerty’s skirt
near the little pool by the rock. The twins clamoured again for it and
Cissy told her to kick it away and let them fight for it so Gerty drew-
back her foot but she wished their stupid ball hadn’t come rolling
down to her and she gave a kick but she missed and Edy and Cissy
laughed.

—If you fail try again, Edy Boardman said.

Gerty smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept into her
pretty check but she was determined to let them see so she just lifted
her skirt a little but just enough and took good aim and gave the ball
a jolly good kick and it went ever so far and the two twins after it
down towards the shingle. Pure jealousy of course it was nothing else
to draw attention on account of the gentleman opposite looking. She
felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Gerty MacDowell,
surging and flaming into her checks. Till then they had only ex-
changed glances of the most casual but now' under the brim of her
new hat she ventured a look at him and the face that met her gaze
there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the
saddest she had ever seen.

Through the open window of the church the fragrant incense was
wafted and with it the fragrant names of her who was conceived
without stain of original sin, spiritual vessel, pray for us, honourable
vessel, pray for us, vessel of singular devotion, pray for us, mystical

339

rose. And careworn hearts were there and toilers for their daily
bread and many who had erred and wandered, their eyes wet with
contrition but for all that bright with hope for the reverend father
Hughes had told them what the great saint Bernard said in his famous
prayer of Mary, the most pious Virgin's intercessory power that it
was not recorded in any age that those who implored her powerful
protection were ever abandoned by her.

The twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles
of childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. Cissy played with
baby Boardman till he crowed with glee, clapping baby hands in air.
Peep she cried behind the hood of the pushcar and Edy asked where
was Cissy gone and then Cissy popped up her head and cried ah!
and, my word, didn’t the little chap enjoy that! And then she told
him to say papa.

— Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa.

And baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent
for eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture
of health, a perfect little bunch of love, and he would certainly turn
out to be something great, they said.

— Haja ja ja haja.

Cissy wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and wanted
him to sit up properly, and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap
she cried out, holy saint Denis, that he was possing wet and to double
the half blanket the other way under him. Of course his infant
majesty was most obstreperous at such toilet formalities and he let
everyone know it:

: — Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa.

And two great big lovely big tears coursing down his checks. It
was all no use soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and telling
him about the geegee and where was the puffpufF but Ciss, always
readywitted, gave him in his mouth the teat of the suckingbottle and
the young heathen was quickly appeased.

Gerty wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby
home out of that and not get on her nerves no hour to be out and the
little brats of twins. She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was
like the paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the
coloured chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all
blotted out, the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey
light on Howth and to hear the music like that and the perfume of

340

those incense they burned In the church like a kind of waft. And
while she gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking
at and there was meaning in his look. His eyes burned into her as
though they would search her through and through, read her very
soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you
trust them? People were so queer. She could see at once by his dark
eyes and his pale intellectual face that he was a foreigner, the image
of the photo she had of .Martin Harvey, the matinee idol, only for the
moustache which she preferred because she wasn’t stagcstruck like
Winny Rippingham that wanted they two to always dress the same on
account of a play but she could not sec whether he had an aquiline
nose or a slightly retrousse from where he was sitting. He was in deep
mourning, she could sec that, and the story of a haunting sorrow was
written on his face. She would have given worlds to know what it
was. He was looking up so intently, so still and he saw her kick the
ball and perhaps he could sec the bright steel buckles of her shoes if
she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down. She %vas
glad that something told her to put on the transparent stockings
thinking Rcggy Wylie might be out but that was far away. Here
was that of which she had so often dreamed. It was he who mattered
and there was joy on her face because she wanted him because she felt
instinctively that he was like no-one else. The very heart of the girl-
woman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she knew on
the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against than
sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a vs'ickcd man.
she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could
convert him easily if he truly loved her. There were wounds that
wanted healing with hcartbalrn. She was a womanly woman not like
other flighty girls, unfcmininc, he had known, those cyclists showing
off what they hadn’t got and she just yearned to know all, to forgive
all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the
memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently,
like a real man, crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his
owncst girlie, for herself alone.

Refuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. Ora pro nobis.
Well has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and
constancy can never be lost or cast away: and fltly is she too a haven
of refuge for the afflicted because of the seven dolours which trans-
pierced her own heart. Gerty could picture the whole scene in the

34 *

cflurch, the stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers
and the blue banners of the blessed Virgin’s sodality and Father
Conroy was helping Canon O’Hanlon at the altar, carrying things
in and out with his eyes cast down. He looked almost a saint and his
confessionbox was so quiet and clean and dark and his hands were
just like white wax and if ever she became a Dominican nun in their
white habit perhaps he might come to the convent for the novena of
Saint Dominic. He told her that time when she told him about that
in confession crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could
sec, not to be troubled because that w'as only the voice of nature and
we were all subject to nature’s laws, he said, in this life and that that
was no sin because that came from the nature of woman instituted
by God, he said, and that Our Blessed Lady herself said to the arch-
angel Gabriel be it done unto me according to Thy Word. He was
so kind and holy and often and often she thought and thought could
she work a ruched teacosy with embroidered floral design for him
as a present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the mantel-
piece white and gold with a canary bird that came out of a little house
to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers for the forty
hours adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a present to
give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or some
place.

The exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and
Jacky threw’ the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it.
Little monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them
and give them a good hiding for themselves to keep them in their
places, the both of them. And Cissy and Edy shouted after them to
come back because they w'cre afraid the tide might come in on them
and be drowned.

— Jacky! Tommy!

Not they! What a great notion they had! So Cissy said it was
the very last time she’d ever bring them out. She jumped up and
called them and she ran down the slope past him, tossing her hair
behind her which had a good enough colour if there had been more
of it but with all the thingamerry she was alw'ays rubbing into it she
couldn t get it to grow long because it wasn’t natural so she could
just go and throw' her hat at it. She ran with long gandcry strides it
was a wonder she didn’t rip up her skirt at the side that w’as too tight
on her because there was a lot of the tomboy about Cissy Caffrey

342

and she was a fons’ard piece whenever she thought she had a good
opportunity to show off and just because she was a good runner she
ran like that so that he could see all the end of her petticoat running
and her skinny shanks up as far as possible. It would have served
her just right if she had tripped up over something accidentally on
purpose with her high crooked French heels on her to make her look
tall and got a fine tumble. Tableau! That would have been a very
charming expose for a gentleman like that to witness.

Queen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all
saints, they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father
Conroy handed the thurible to Canon O’Hanlon and he put in the
incense and censed the Blessed Sacrament and Cissy Caffrey caught the
two twins and she was itching to give them a ringing good clip on the
ear but she didn’t because she thought he might be watching but she
never made a bigger mistake in all her life because Gerty could see
without looking that he never took his eyes off of her and then Canon
O’Hanlon handed the thurible back to Father Conroy and knelt down
looking up at the Blessed Sacrament and the choir began to sing
Tantum ergo and she just swung her foot in and out in time as the music
rose and fell to the Tantumer gosa cramen turn. Three and eleven she
paid for those stockings in Sparrow’s of George’s street on the T uesday,
no the Monday before Easter and there wasn’t a brack on them and
that was what he was looking at, transparent, and not at her insig-
nificant ones that had neither shape nor form (the cheek of her!)
because he had eyes in his head to see the difference for himself.

Cissy came up along t))c strand with the two twins and their ball
with her hat anyhow on her to one side after her run and she did
look a strecl tugging the two kids along with the flimsy blouse she
bought only a fortnight before like a rag on her back and bit of her
petticoat hanging like a caricature. Gerty just took off' her hat for a
moment to settle her hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown
tresses was never seen on a girl’s shoulders, a radiant little vision, in
sooth, almost maddening in its sweetness. You would have to travel
many a long mile before you found a head of hair the like of that.
She could almost see the swift answering flush of admiration in his
eyes that set her tingling in every nerve. She put on her hat so that
she could see from underneath the brim and swung her buckled shoe
faster for her breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes.
He was eyeing her as a snake eyes its prey. Her woman’s instinct told

343

her that she had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning
scarlet swept from throat to brow till the lovely colour of her face
became a glorious rose.

Edy Boardman was noticing it too because she was squinting at
Gerty, half smiling, with her specs, like an old maid, pretending to
nurse the baby. Irritable little gnat she was and always would be and
that was why no-one could get on with her, poking her nose into
what was no concern of hers. And she said to Gerty:

— A penny for your thoughts.

— What? replied Gerty with a smile reinforced by the whitest of
teeth. I was only wondering was it late.

Because she wished to goodness they’d take the snotty-nosed tw'ins
and their baby home to the mischief out of that so that was w'hy she
just gave a gentle hint about its being late. And when Cissy came up
Edy asked her the time and Miss Cissy, as glib as you like, said it was
half past kissing time, time to kiss again. But Edy wanted to know
because they were told to be in early.

— Wait, said Cissy, I’ll ask my uncle Peter over there what’s the
time by his conundrum.

So over she went and when he saw her coming she could sec him
take his hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to
play w’ith his watchchain, looking at the church. Passionate nature
though he was Gerty could sec that he had enormous control over
himself. One moment he had been there, fascinated by a loveliness
that made him gaze, and the next moment it was the quiet gravcfaccd
gentleman, selfcontrol expressed in every line of his distinguished-
looking figure.

Cissy said to excuse her would he mind telling her what was the
right time and Gerty could see him taking out his watch, listening to
it and looking up and clearing his throat and he said he was very sorry
his w'atch was stopped but he thought it must be after eight because
the sun was set. His voice had a cultured ring in it and though he
spoke in measured accents there was a suspicion of a quiver in the
mellow tones. Cissy said thanks and came back with her tongue out
and said uncle said his w'atcrworks were out of order.

Then they sang the second verse of the Tantum trgo and Canon
O Hanlon got up again and censed the Blessed Sacrament and knelt
down and he told Father Conroy that one of the candles was just going
to set fire to the flowers and Father Conroy got up and settled it all

344

right and she could sec the gentleman winding his watch and listening
to the works and she sw ung her leg more in and out in time. It was
getting darker but he could see and he was looking all the time that
he was winding the watch or whatever he was doing to it and then he
put it back and put his hands back into his pockets. She felt a kind
of a sensation rushing all over her and she knew by the feel of her
scalp and that irritation against her stays that that thing must be
coming on because the last tinK too was when she clipped her hair on
account of the moon. His dark eyes fixed tliemselves on her again
drinking in her every contour, literally worshipping at her shrine. It
ever there was undisguised admiration in a man’s passionate gaze it
was there plain to be seen on that man’s fa«!e. It is for you, Gertrude
MacDowcll, and you know it.

Edy began to get ready to go and it was high time for her and
Gcrty noticed that that iittlc hint she gave had the desired effect
because it was a long way along the strand to where there was the
place to push up the pushcar and Cissy took off the twins’ caps and
tidied their hair to make herself attracti\c of course and Canon
O’Hanlon stood up w'ith his cope poking up at his neck and Father
Conroy handed him the card to read off and he read out Pancm <ii
calo prastitisti eis and Edy and Cissy w'cre talking about tlic time all the
lime and asking her but Gerty could pay them back in their ow n coin and
she just answered with scathing politeness when Edy asked her was
she heartbroken about her best boy throwing her over. Gerty winced
sharply. A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that spoke volumes ot
scorn immeasurable. It hurl. O yes, it cut deep because Edy had her
own quiet way of saying things like that she knew would wound like
the confounded little cat she was. Gerty’s lips parted swiftly to frame
the word but she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, so slim,
so flawless, so beautifully moulded it seemed one an artist might have
dreamed of. She had loved him better than he knew. Lighthearted
deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never understand what
he had meant to her and for an instant there was in the blue eyes a
quick stinging of tears. Their eyes were probing her mercilessly but
with a brave effort she sparkled back in sympathy as she glanced at her
new conquest for them to see.

— O, responded Gerty, quick as lightning, laughing, and the proud
head flashed up, I can throw my cap at who I like because it’s leap

year.

345

Jlcr words rang our crystalclcar, more musical than the cooing of
the ringdove, but they cut the silence icily. There was that in her
young voice that told that she was not a one to be lightly trifled with.
As tor Mr Reggv with his swank and his bit of money she could just
chuck him aside as if he was so much filth and never again would she
cast as much as a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard
into a dozen pieces. And if ever after he dared to presume she could
give him one look of measured scorn that would make him shrivel up
on the spot. Miss puny little Edy’s countenance fell to no slight
extent and Gerty could sec by her looking as black as thunder that
she was simply in a towering rage though she hid it, the little kinnatt,
because that shaft had struck home for her petty jealousy and they both
knew that she was something aloof, apart in another sphere, that she
was not ol them and there was somebody else too that knew it and
saw it so they could put that in their pipe and smoke it.

Edv straightened up baby Boardman to get ready to go and Cissy
tucked in the ball and the spades and buckets and it was high time too
because the sandman was on his way for Master Boardman junior and
Cissy told him too that Billy \^'inks was coming and that baby was to
go deedaw and baby looked just too ducky, laughing up out of his
gleeful eyes, and Cissy poked him like that out of fun in his wee fat
tunimy and baby, without as much as by your leave, sent up his
compliments on to his brandnew’ dribbling bib.

— O my! Puddeny pic! protested Ciss. He has his bib destroyed.

The slight contretemps claimed her attention but in two twos she
set that little matter to rights.

Gerty stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous cough
and Edy asked what and she was just going to tell her to catch it w’hile
it was flying but she was ever ladylike in her deportment so she
simply passed it off with consummate tact by saying that that was the
benediction because just then the bell rang out from the steeple over
the quiet seashore because Canon O’Hanlon was up on the altar with
the veil that Father Conroy put round him round his shoulders giving
the benediction with the blessed Sacrament in his hands.

How- moving the scene there in the gathering twilight, the last
glimpse of Erin, the touching chime of those evening bells and at the
same time a bat flew’ forth from the ivied belfry through the dusk,
hither, thither, with a tiny lost cry. And she could see far away the
lights of the lighthouses so picturesque she would have loved to do

346

with a box of paints because it was easier than to make a man and
soon the lamplighter would be going his rounds past the presbyteriar.
church grounds and along by shady Tritonville avenue where the
couples walked and lighting the lamp near her window where Rcggy
Wylie used to turn his freewheel like she read in that book The Lamp-
lighter by Miss Cummins, author of Mabel Vaughan and other tales.
For Gerty had her dreams that no-one knew of. She loved to read
poetry and when she got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely
confession album w-ith the coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she
laid it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did not err on
the side of luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean. It was there she
kept her girlish treasures trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her child of
Mary badge, the whiterose scent, the eyebrowleine, her alabaster
pouncetbox and the ribbons to change when her things cante home
from the wash and there were some beautiful thoughts written in it in
violet ink that she bought in Hely’s of Dame Street for she felt that
she too could write poetry if she could only express herself like that
poem that appealed to her so deeply that she had copied out of the
newspaper she found one evening round the potherbs. Art thou real,
my ideal? it was called by Louis J. Walsh, Maghcrafelt, and after there
was something about tuilight, 'wilt thou ever? and ofttimes the beauty
of poetry, so sad in its transient loveliness, had misted her eyes with
silent tears that the years were slipping by for her, one by one, and
but for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition
and that was an accident coming down Dalkcy hill and she always tried
to conceal it. But it must end she felt. If she saw that magic lure in
his eyes there would be no holding back for her. Love laughs at
locksmiths. She would make the great sacrihee. Her every effort
would be to share his thoughts. Dearer than the whole world would
she be to him and gild his days with happiness. There was the all-
important question and she was dying to know was he a married man
or a widow'er who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the nobleman
with the foreign name from the land of song had to have her put into
a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But even if — what then? Would
it make a very great difference? From everything in the least in-
delicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that
sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside
the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men, with no respect
for a girl’s honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police

347

station. No, no: not that. They would be just good friends like a
big brother and sister w'ithout all that other in spite of the conventions
of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he w'as in
mourning for from the days beyond recall. She thought she under-
stood. She would try to understand him because men were so different.
0

The old love was waiting, waiting w’ith little white hands stretched out.
with blue appealing eyes. Heart of mine! She would follow her
dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in
all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide.
Nothing else mattered. Come what might she would be wild, un-
trammelled, free.

Canon O’Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the labernaclc
and the choir sang Laudate Dominum omnes gentes and then he locked
the tabernacle door because the benediction w-as over and Father
Conroy hatidcd him his hat to put on and crosscat Edy asked wasn’t
she coiTiing but Jacky Caffrey called out:

— O, look, Cissy!

And they all looked was it sheet lightning but Tommy saw it too
over the trees beside the church, blue and then green and purple.

— It’s fireworks. Cissy Caffrey said.

And they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the
church, hclterskclter, Edy with the pushcar with baby Boardman in
it and Cissy holding Tommy and Jacky by the hand so they wouldn’t
fall running.

— Come on, Gcrty, Cissy called. It’s the bazaar fireworks.

But Gerty was adamant. She had no intention of being at their
beck and call. If they could run like rossics she could sit so she said she
could sec from where she was. The eyes that were fastened upon her
set her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his
glance, and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that
face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they
w'cre left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she
knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a
man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and focc were
working and a tremor went over her. She leaned back far to look up
where the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as
not to fall back looking up and there was no one to see only him and
her when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs likC'
that, supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the

348

pandng of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew about the
passion of men like that, hot-blooded, because Bertha Supple told her
once in dead secret and made her swear she’d never about the gentle-
man lodger that was staying with them out of the Congested Districts
Board that had pictures cut out of papers of those skirt-dancers and
highkickers and she said he used to do something not very nice that
you could imagine sometimes in the bed. But this was altogether
different from a thing like that because there was all the difference
because she could almost feel him draw her face to his and the first
quick hot touch of his handsome lips. Besides there was absolution
so long as you didn’t do the other thing before being married and there
ought to be women priests that would understand without your telling
out and Cissy Caffrey too sometimes had that dreamy kind of dreamy
look in her eyes so that she too, my dear, and Winny Rippingham so
mad about actors’ photographs and besides it was on account of that
other thing coming on the way it did.

And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she
leaned back and the garters were blue to match on account of the
transparent and they all saw it and shouted to look, look there it was
and she leaned back ever so far to see the fireworks and something
queer was flying about through the air, a soft thing to and fro, dark.
And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees up, up, and,
in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went
higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look
up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused
with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could
see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses
the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven,
on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw-
and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she w'as
trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full
view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the sw'ing or
wading and she w-asn’t ashamed and he w'asn’t cither to look in that
immodest way like that because he couldn’t resist the sight of the
wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so
immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking.
She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender
arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow- the cry of
a young girl’s love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry

349

that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang
shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh
of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a
stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all
greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet
soft!

'Mien all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah!
She glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance
of piteous protest, of shy reproach under w'hich he coloured like a girl.
He was leaning back against the rock behind. Leopold Bloom (for
it is he) stands silent, with bowed bead before those young guileless
eyes. What a brute he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul
had called to him and, wretch that he was, how’ had he answered?
An utter cad he had been. He of all men! But there was an infinite
store of mercy in those eyes, for him too a w-ord of pardon even
though he had erred and sinned and wandered. Should a girl tell?
No, a thousand times no. That was their secret, only theirs, alone in
the hiding twilight and there w'as none to know- or tell save the little
bat that fiew' so softly through the evening to and fro and little bats
don’t tell.

Cissy CafFrey whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to
show what a great person she was: and then she cried:

— Gcrty! Gcrty! Wc’regoing. Comcon. Wc can see from farther up.

Gcrty had an idea, one of love’s little ruses. She slipped a hand
into her kerchief pocket and took out the w-adding and waved in reply
of course without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he’s
too far to. She rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they
would meet again, there, and she would dream of that till then,
tomorrow, of her dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her
full height. Their souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes
that reached her heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured on
her sweet flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a sweet for-
giving smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted.

Slowly without looking back she went down the uneven strand to
Cissy, to Edy, to Jacky and Tommy Caffrey, to little baby Boardman.
It was darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the
strand and slippy seaweed. She walked with a certain quiet dignity
characteristic of her but with care and very slowly because Gerty
MacDowell was. . .

350

Tight boots? No. She’s lame! O!

Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That’s
why she’s left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought
something was wrong by the cut ot her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect
is ten times worse in a woman. But makes tliem polite. Glad I didn t
know it w'hcn she was on show. Plot little devil all the same. Wouldn’t
mind. Curiosity like a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses. That
squinty one is delicate. Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel
ticklish. I have such a bad headache today. Where did 1 put the
letter? Yes, all right. All kinds of crazy longings. Licking pennies.
Girl in Tranquilla convent that nun told me liked to smell rock oil.
Virgins go mad in the end I suppose. Sister? How many women in
Dublin have it today? .Martha, she. Something in the air. That’s the
moon. But then why don’t all women menstruate at the same time
with same moon, I mean? Depends on the time they were born, I
suppose. Or all start scratch then get out of step. Sometimes Molly
and Milly together. Anyhow I got the best of that. Damned glad I
didn’t do it in the bath this morning over her silly I will punish you
letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning. That gouger
M’Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his w’ifc engagement in the
country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small mercies.
Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves.
Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of
offices. Reserve better. Don’t want it they throw it at you. Catch
cm alive, O. Pity they can’t see themselves. A dream of wcllfillcd
hose. Where was that? Ah, yes. Mutoscopc pictures in Capel street:
for men only. Peeping Tom. Willy’s hat and w-hat the girls did with
it. Do they snapshot those girls or is it all a fake? LingtrU does it.
Felt for the curves inside her deshabUU. Excites them also when
they’re. I’m all clean come and dirty me. And they like dressing one
another for the sacrifice. Milly delighted with Molly s new blouse.
At first. Put them all on to take them all off. Molly. Why I bought
her the violet garters. Us too: the tie he wore, his lovely socks and
turnedup trousers. He wore a pair of gaiters the night that first we met.
His lovely shirt was shining beneath his what? of jet. Say a woman
loses a charm with every pin she takes out. Pinned together. O
Mairy lost the pin of her. Dressed up to the nines for somebody.
Fashion part of their charm. Just changes when you’re on the track
of the secret. Except the cast: Mary, Martha: now as then. No

35*

reasonable offer refused. She wasn’t in a hurry either. Always off to
a fellow when they are. They never forget an appointment. Out on
spec probably. They believe in chance because like themselves. And
the others inclined to give her an odd dig. Girl friends at school,
arms round each other’s necks or with ten fingers locked, kissing and
whispering secrets about nothing in the convent garden. Nuns with
whitewashed faces, cool coif and their rosaries going up and down,
vindictive too for what they can't get. Barbed wire. Be sure now
and write to me. And I’ll write to you. Now won’t you? Molly and
Josie Powell. Till Mr Right comes along then meet once in a blue
moon. Tableaul O, look who it is for the love of God ! How are you
at all? What have you been doing with yourself? Kiss and delighted
to, kiss, to sec you. Picking holes in each other’s appearance. You’re
looking splendid. Sister souls showing their teeth at one another.
How many have you left? Wouldn’t lend each other a pinch of salt.

Ah!

Devils they arc when that’s coming on them. Dark devilish appear-
ance. Molly often told me feel things a ton weight. Scratch the sole
of my foot. O that way! O, that’s exquisite! Feel it myself too.
Good to rest once in a way. Wonder if it’s bad to go with them then.
Safe in one way. Turns milk, makes fiddlcstrings snap. Something
about withering plants I read in a garden. Besides they say if the
flower withers she wears she’s a flirt. All are. Daresay she felt I.
When you feel like that you often meet what you feel. Liked me or
what? Dress they look at. Always know a fellow courting: collars
and cuffs. Well cocks and lions do the same and slags. Same time
might prefer a tic undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I when
I was? No. Gently docs it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in the
dark and never tell. Saw something in me. Wonder what. Sooner
have me as I am than some poet chap with bearsgrease, plastcry hair
lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid gentleman in literary. Ought
to attend to my appearance my age. Didn’t let her see me in profile.
Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty
and the beast. Besides I can’t be so if Molly. Took off her hat to show
her hair. Wide brim bought to hide her face, meeting someone might
know her, bend down or carry a bunch of flowers to smell. Hair
strong in rut. Ten bob I got for Molly’s combings when we were on
the rocks in Holies street. Why not.? Suppose he gave her money.
Why not? All a prejudice. She’s worth ten, fifteen, more a pound.

352

What? I think so. AH that for nothing. Bold hand. Mrs Marion. Did
I forget to write address on that letter like the postcard I sent to Flynn?
And the day I went to Drimmie’s without a necktie. Wrangle with
Molly it was put me off. No, I remember. Richie Goulding. He s
another. Weighs on his mind. Funny my watch stopped at half past
four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean could do it myself. Save.
Was that just when he, she?

O, he did. Into her. She did. Done.

Ah!

Mr Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord,
that little limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. Aftereffect
not pleasant. Still you have to get rid of it someway. They don’t
care. Complimented perhaps. Go honie to nicey bread and milky and
say night prayers with the kiddies. Well, aren l they. See her as she
is spoil all. Must have the stage setting, the rouge, costume, position,
music. The name too. Amours of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs
Bracegirdle, Maud Branscombe. Curtain up. Moonlight silver
effulgence. Maiden discovered with pensive bosom. Little sweet-
heart come and kiss me. Still I feel. The strength it gives a man.
That’s the secret of it. Good job I let off there behind coming out
ofDignam’s. Cider that was. Otherwise I couldn’t have. Makes you
want to sing after. Lacaus esant taratara. Suppose I spoke to her.
What about? Bad plan however if you don’t know how to end the
conversation. Ask them a question they ask you another. Good idea
if you’re in a cart. Wonderful of course if you say: good evening, and
you see shc^s on for it: good evening* O but the dark evening in the
Appian way I nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew!
Girl in Meath street that night. All the dirty things I made her say
all wrong of course. My arks she called it. It’s so hard to find one
who. Ahol If you don’t answer when they solicit must be horrible
for them till they harden. And kissed my hand when I gave her the
extra two shillings. Parrots. Press the button and the bird will
squeak. Wish she hadn’t called me sir. Oh, her mouth in the darkl
And you a married man with a single girl! That’s what they enjoy.
Taking a man from another woman. Or even hear of it. Diffcrerit
with me. Glad to get away from other chap’s wife. Eating off hi
cold plate. Chap in the Burton today spitting back gumchewed gristle.
French letter still in my pocketbook. Cause of half the trouble. But
might happen sometime, I don’t think. Come in. All is prepared.

I dreamt. What? Worst is beginning. How they change the venue
when it s not what they like. Ask you do you like mushrooms because
she once knew- a gentleman who. Or ask you what someone was
going to say when he changed his mind and stopped. Yet if I went
the whole hog, say: I want to, something like that. Because I did.
She too. Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to want something
awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must have been
thinking of someone else all the time. What harm? Must since she
came to the use of reason, he, he and he. First kiss docs the trick.
The propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy
like, tell by their eye, on the sly. First thoughts arc best. Remember
that till their dying day. Molly, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her
under the Moorish wall beside the gardens. Fifteen she told me.
But her breasts were developed. Fell asleep then. After Gcncrcc
dinner that was when we drove home the featherbed mountain. Gnash-
ing her teeth in sleep. Lord mayor had his eye on her too. Val
Dillon. Apoplectic.

There she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks.
Up like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they
must be, waiting for something to happen. Want to be grownups.
Dressing in mother’s clothes. Time enough, understand all the ways
of the world. And the dark one with the mop head and the nigger
mouth. I knew she could whistle. Mouth made for that. Like
Molly. Why that high class w’horc in Jammet’s wore her veil only to
her nose. Would you mind, please, telling me the right time? Til
tell you the right time up a dark lane. Say prunes and prisms forty
times every morning, cure for fat lips. Caressing the little boy too.
Onlookers sec most of the game. Of course they understand birds,
animals, babies. In their line.

Didn’t look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn’t
give that satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside
girls. Fine eyes she had, clear. It’s the white of the eye brings that
out not so much the pupil. Did she know what I? Course. Like a cat
sitting beyond a dog’s jump. Women never meet one like that
Wilkins in the high school drawing a picture of Venus with all his
belongings on show. Call that innocence? Poor idiot! His wife has
her work cut out for her. Never sec them sit on a bench marked IFet
Paint. Eyes all over them. Look under the bed for what’s not there.
Longing to get the fright of their lives. Sharp as needles they arc.

354

When I said to Molly the man at the corner of CufFc street was good-
looking, thought she might like, twigged at once he had a false arm.
Had too. Where do they get that? Typist going up Roger Greene s
stairs two at a time to show her understandings. Handed down from
father to mother to daughter, I mean. Bred in the bone. Milly for
example drying her handkerchief on the mirror to save tlic ironing.
Best place for an ad to catch a woman’s eye on a mirror. And when
I sent her for Molly’s Paisley shawl to Prcsscoti’s, by the way that
ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking. Clever little
minx! I never told her. Neat way she carries parcels too. .Attract
men, small thing like that. Holding up her hand, shaking it, to let
the blood flow back when it was red. \\ ho did you learn that Irom.
Nobody. Something the nurse taught me. O, don’t they know?
Three years old she was in front of Molly's drcssingtable just before
we left Lombard street west. Me have a nice face. Mullingar. Who
knows? Ways of the world. Young student. Straight on her pins
anyway not like the other. Still she w'as game. Lord, I am wet.
Devil you arc. Swell of her calf. Transparent stockings, stretched to
breaking point. Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings.
Or the one in Grafton street. White. Wow! Beef to the heel.

A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles.
Zrads and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Cissy and Tommy ran out to see
and Edy after with the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of
the rocks. Will she? Watch! Watch! Sec! Looked round. She
smelt an onion. Darling, I saw your. I saw all.

Lord! , T>-

Did me good all the same. OIF colour after Kiernan s, Dignam s.

For this relief much thanks. In Hamlet^ that is. Lord! It was all
things combined. Excitement. When she leaned back felt an 2chc
at the butt of my tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He s right.
Might have made a worse fool of myself however. Instead of talking
about nothing. Then I will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language
between us. It couldn’t be? No, Gerty they called her. Might be
false name however like my and the address Dolphin’s barn a blind.

Her maiden name was *Jemina Brown
And she lived with her mother in Irishtown.

Place made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same
brush. Wiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to

355

her as if it understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never
could throw anything straight at school. Crooked as a ram’s horn.
Sad however because it lasts only a few years till they settle down to
potwalloping and papa’s pants will soon fit Willy and fullers’ earth for
the baby when they hold him out to do ah ah. No soft job. Saves
them. Keeps them out ot harm’s way. Nature. Washing child,
washing corpse. Dignam. Children’s hands always round them.
Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even closed at first, sour milk in their
swaddles and tainted curds. Oughtn’t to have given that child an
empty teat to suck. Fill it up with wind. Mrs. Beaufoy, Purefoy.
Must call to the hospital. Wonder is nurse Callan there still. She used
to look over some nights when Molly was in the Coffee Palace.
That young doctor O’Hare I noticed her brushing his coat. And
Mrs Breen and Mrs Dignam once like that too, marriageable. Worst
of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the City Arms. Husband
rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have that in
your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning:
was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the husband.
Chickens come home to roost. They stick by one another like glue.
Maybe the women s fault also. That’s where Molly can knock spots
off them. It is the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the
figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those
others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow
me to introduce my. Then they trot you out some kind of a non-
descript, wouldn t know what to call her. Always sec a fellow’s weak
point in his wife. Still there’s destiny in it. falling in love. Have their
own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if some
woman didn t take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of
a shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them He
matched them. Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice
nought makes one. Or old rich chap of seventy and blushing bride.
Marry in May and repent in December. This wet is very unpleasant.
Stuck. Well the foreskin is not back. Better detach.

Ow!

Other hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long
and the short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my
watch. Wristw'atches arc always going wrong. Wonder is there any
magnetic influence between the pereon because that was about the
time he. Yes, I suppose at once. Cat’s away the mice will play. I

remember looking in Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of
everything magnetism. Earth for instance pulling this and being
pulled. That causes movement. And time? \\cll that s the time the
movement takes. Then if one thing stopped the whole ghesabo would
stop bit by bit. Because it’s arranged. Magnetic needle tells you
what’s going on in the sun, the stars. Little piece of steel iron. When
you hold out the fork. Come. Come. Tip. Woman and man that is.
Fork and steel. Molly, he. Dress up and look and suggest and let you
sec and sec more and defy you if you re a man to sec that and, like a
sneeze coming, legs, look, look and if you have any guts in you. Tip.
Have to let fly.

Wonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before
third person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Molly, her
underjaw stuck out head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots
and spurs at the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard
street west. Fine voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell
that I did, like flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine
probably in the paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time
doing it scraped her slipper on the floor so they w'ouldn’t hear. But
lots of them can’t kick the beam, I think. Keep that thing up for
hours. Kind of a general all round over me and half down my back.

Wait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That’s her perfume. Why she waved her
hand. I leave you this to think of me when I’m far away on the
pillow. What is it? Heliotrope? No, Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I
think. She’d like scent of that kind. Sweet and cheap: soon sour.
Why Molly likes opoponax. Suits her with a little jessamine mixed.
Her high notes and her low notes. At the dance night she met him,
dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She was wearing her black
and it had the perfume of the lime before. Good conductor, is it?
Or bad? Light too. Suppose there’s some connection. For instance
if you go into a cellar where it’s dark. Mysterious thing too. Why
did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself, slow
but sure. Suppose it’s ever so many millions of tiny grains blown

across. Yes, it is. Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this morrung,

smell them leagues off. Tell you what it is. It^s like a fine veil or
web they have all over the skin, fine like what do you call it go^amcr
and they’re always spinning it out of them, fine as anything, rainbow
coloure without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes off.
Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little kick,

357

taking them off. Byby till next time. Also the cat likes to snifF in
her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too.
Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really.*
There or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all
holes and corners. Hyacinth perfume made of oil or ether or some-
thing. Muskrat. Bag under their tails one grain pour off odour for
years. Dogs at each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How
do you sniff? Hm. Hm. Very well, thank you. Animals go by that.
Yes now, look at it that way. Were the same. Some women for

instance warn you offwhen they have their period. Come near. Then

get a hogo you could hang your hat on. Like what? Potted herrings
gone stale or, Boof! Please keep off the grass.

Perhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves
Long John had on his desk the other. Breath? What you eat and
drink gives that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with
that because priests that are supposed to be are different. Women
buzz round it like flies round treacle. Railed off the altar get on to
It at any cost. The tree of forbidden priest. O father, will you? Let
me be the first to. That diffuses itself all through the body, permeates.
Source of life and it’s extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let
me.

Mr Bloom inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of
his waistcoat. Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah, no, that’s the soap.

O by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind.
Never went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like
that hag this morning. Hynes might have paid me that three shillings.

I could mention Meagher’s just to remind him. Still if he works that
paragraph. Two and nine. Bad opinion of me he’ll have. Call
tomorrow. How much do I owe you? Three and nine? Two and
nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving credit another time. Lose your
customers that way. Pubs do. Fellow run up a bill on the slate and
then slinking around the back streets into somewhere else.

Here s this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just
went as far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks
mangled out: had a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after
meals. After supper walk a mUe. Sure he has a small bank balance
somewhere, government sit. Walk after him now make him awkward
like those newsboys me today. Still you learn something. Sec our-
selves as others sec us. So long as women don’t mock what matter.^

358

That’s the way to find out. Ask yourself who is he now. Th< Mystery
Man on the Beach, prize titbit story by Mr Leopold Bloom. Payment
at the rate of one guinea per column. And that fellow’ today at the
graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his kismet however.
Healthy perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must
be some somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body feels the
atmosphere. Old Betty’s joints are on the rack. Mother Shipton’s
prophecy that is about ships around they fly in the twinkling. No.
Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And distant hills seem coming

nigh.

Howth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to
change or they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling.
People afraid of the dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time.
Jewels diamonds flash better. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not
going to hurt you. Better now of course than long ago. Country
roads. Run you through the small guts for nothing. Still two types
there arc you bob against. Scowl or smile. Pardon! Not at all.
Best time to spray plants too in the shade after the sun. Some light
still. Red rays arc longest. Roygbiv Vance taught us; red, orange,
yellow', green, blue, indigo, violet. A star I see. Venus? Can t tell
yet. Two, when three it’s night. Were those nightclouds there all
the time? Looks like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are they?
An optical illusion. Mirage. Land of the setting sun this. Homcrulc
sun setting in the southeast. My native land, goodnight.

Dew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on
white fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong
fight his way up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a
summer cold, sore on the mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst.
Friction of the position. Like to be that rock she sat on. O sweet
little, you don’t know how nice you looked. 1 begin to like them at
that age. Green apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose it s the only
time we cross legs, seated. Also the library today: those girl graduates.
Happy chairs under them. But it’s the evening influence. They feel
all that. Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem
artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the lamps.
Nightstock in Mat Dillon’s garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish
I had a full length oil-painting of her then. June that was too I wooed.
The year returns. History repeats itself. Ye crags and peaks I’m with
you once again. Life, love, voyage round your own little world.

359

And now? Sad about her lame of course but must be on your guard
not to feel too much pity. They take advantage.

All quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we.
The rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums and 1
the plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names
change: that’s all. Lovers: yum yum.

Tired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the man-
hood out of me, little wretch. She kissed me. My youth. Never
again. Only once it comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow.
No. Returning not the same. Like kids your second visit to a house.
The new I w'ant. Nothing new- under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolp-
phin’s barn. Are you not happy in your? Naughty darling. At
Dolphin’s barn charades in Luke Doyle’s house. Mat Dillon and his
bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Uuy, Hetty. Molly
too. Eightyscven that was. Year before we. And the old major
partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only
child. So it returns. Think you’re escaping and run into yourself.
Longest w-ay round is the shortest way home. And just w-hen he and
she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played.
Rip: tear in Henny Doyle’s overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering.
Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle com-
ing back. She leaned on the sideboard watching. Moorish eyes
Tw’cnty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed. Forgotten!
The young are old. His gun rusty from the dew'.

^ Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks
I’m a tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They
believed you could be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow.
Ba. There he goes. Funny little beggar. Wonder where he lives.
Belfry up there. Very likely. Hanging by his heels in the odour of
sanctity. Bell scared him out, I suppose. Mass seems to be over.
Could hear them all at it. Pray for us. And pray for us. And pray
for us. Good idea the repetition. Same thing with ads. Buy from us.
And buy from us. Yes, there’s the light in the priest’s house. Their
frugal meal. Remember about the mistake in the valuation when I
was in Thom’s. Twentyeight it is. Two houses they have. Gabriel
Conroy s brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder why they come out
at night like mice. They’re a mixed breed. Birds are like hopping
truce. What frightens them, light or noise? Better sit still. All instinct
like the bird in drouth got water out of the end of a jar by throwing

in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny hands. Weeny
bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white. Colours
depend on the light you sfee. Stare the sun for example like the eagle
then look at a shoe sec a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to stamp his
trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the
staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never sec them with three
colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the Ctty
Arms with the letter cm on her forehead. Body fifty different colours.
Howth a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That’s how th.tt wise
man what’s his name with the burning glass. Then the heather goes
on fire. It can’t be tourists’ matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry
rub together in the wind and light. Or broken bottles in the furze
act as a burning glass in the sun. Archimedes. I have it! My memory’s
not so bad.

Ba. Who knows what they’re always flying for. Insects? That bee
last week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling.
Might be the one bit me, come back to see. Birds too never find out
what they say. Like our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve?
they have to fly over the ocean and back. Lot must be killed in
storms, telegraph wires. Dreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes ot
ocean-going steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like
scacows. Faugh a baliagh. Out of that, bloody curse to you. Others
in vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake
when the stormy winds do blow, ^ia^ricd too. Sometimes away tor
years at the ends of the earth somewhere. No ends really because it’s
round. Wife in every port they say. She has a good job if she minds
it till Johnny comes marching home again. If ever he docs. Smelling
the tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The
anchor’s weighed. Off' he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for
luck. Well? And the tephilim no what’s this they call it poor papa’s
father had on his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of
Egypt and into the house of bondage. Something in all those super-
stitions because when you go out never know what dangers. Hanging
on to a plank or astride of a beam for grim life, lifebelt round round
him, gulping salt water, and that’s the last of his nibs till the sharks
catch hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick?

Then you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid,
crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones’ locker. Moon looking

down. Not my fault, old cockalorum.

361

A lost long candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in
search of funds for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and shed
a cluster of violet but one wl -e stars. They floated, fell: they faded.
The shepherd’s hour: the hour of holding: hour of tryst. From house
CO house, giving his evenvelcome double knock, went the nine o’clock
postman, the glowworm’s lamp at his belt gleaming here and there
through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted
lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy’s terrace. By screens of lighted windows,
by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying, wailing: Evening
Telegraph, stop press edition! Result oj the Gold Cup race! and from
the door of Dignam’s house a boy ran out and called. Twittering the
bat flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands the coming surf
crept, grey. Howth settled for slumber tired of long days, of yumyum
rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze'lift,
ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep
and slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank
the anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom.

Life those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish
Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and
breeches buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise
in the Erin’s King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the
zoo. Filthy trip. Drunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking
overboard to feed the herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of
God in their faces. Milly, no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose,
laughing. Don’t know what death is at that age. And then their
stomachs clean. But being lost they fear. When we hid behind the
tree at Crumlin. I didn’t want to. Mamma! Mammal Babes in the
wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up in the
air to catch them. I’ll murder you. Is it only half fun? Or children
playing battle. Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each
other? Sometimes they go off. Poor kids. Only troubles wildfire and
nettlcrash. Calomel purge I got her for that. After getting better
asleep with Molly. Very same teeth she has. What do they love?
Another themselves? But the morning she chased her with the
umbrella. Perhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking.
Little hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says
when you touch. Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first
stays I remember. Made me laugh to see. Little paps to begin with.
Left one is more sensitive, I think. Mine too. Nearer the heart.

362

Padding themselves out if fat is in fashion. Her growing pains at
night, calling, wakening me. Frightened she was when her nature
came on her first. Poor child! Strange moment for the mother too.
Brings back her girlhood. Gibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista.
O’Hara's tower. I'he seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that
gobbled all his family. Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the
lines. Looking out over the sea site told me. Evening like this, but
clear, no clouds. I always thought I’d marry a lord or a gentleman
with a private yacht. Buenas nochfs, stnorita. El hombrt ama la
muchacha hermosa. Why nie? Because you were so foreign from the
others.

Better not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes
you dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too
late for Ltah, Lily oj Ktllarney. No. Might be still up. Call to the
hospital to sec. Hope she’s over. Long day I’ve had. Martha, the
bath, funeral, house of keys, museum with those goddesses, Dcdalus’
song. Then that bawicr in Barney Kiernan’s. Got my own back there.
Drunken ranters. What I said about his God made him wince.
Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and laugh at
themselves. Always want to be sw'illing in company. Afraid to be
alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way
round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers
for Israel. Three cheers for the sister-in-law he hawked about, three
fangs in her mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly nice old party
for a cup of tea. The sister of the wife of the wild man of Borneo has
just come to town. Imagine that in the early morning at close range.
Everyone to his taste as Morris said when he kissed the cow-. But
Dignam’s put the boots on it. Houses of mourning so depressing
because you never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must call
to those Scottish widows as I promised. Strange name. Takes it for
granted we’re going to pop off first. That widow’ on Monday was it
outside Cramer’s that looked at me. Buried the poor husband but
progressing favourably on the premium. Her widow'’s mite. Well?
What do you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along.
Widower I hate to sec. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O’Connor wife
and five children poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless.
Some good matronly woman in a porkpic hat to mother him. Take
him in tow, platter face and a large apron. Ladies’ grey flannelette
bloomers, three shillings a pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved,

363

loved tor ever, they say. Ugly: no woman thinks she is. Love, He and
be handsome for tomorrow we die. See him sometimes walking about
trying to find out who played the trick. U. p.: up. Fate that is.
He, not me. .^Iso a shop often noticed. Curse seems to dog it.
Dreanu last night? Wait. Something confused. She had red slippers
on. 1 urkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does. Would I like
her in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Nannetti’s gone. Mail-
boat. Near Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes’s. Work
Hynes and Crawford. Petticoats for .Molly. She has something to
put m them. What’s that? Might be money.

Mr Bloom stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand.
He brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can’t read.
Better go. Better. I’m tired to move. Page of an old copybook.
All those holes and pebbles. Who could count them? Never know
what you find. Bottle with story of a treasure in it thrown from a
wreck. Parcels post. Children always want to throw things in the
sea. Trust? Bread cast on the waters! W'hat’s this? Bit of stick.

O! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she
come here tomorrow? W’ait for her somewhere for ever. Must come
back. Murderers do. WTll I?

Mr Bloom- with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot.
Write a message for her. Might remain. What?

1 «

Some flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away

r idc comes here a pool near her foot. Bend, see my face there, dark

mirror, breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and

letters. O, those transparent! Besides they don’t know. What is the

meaning of that other world. I called you naughty boy because I do
not like. ‘

A.M. A.

No room. Let it go.

Mr Bloom effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing
sand. Nothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming

up here. Except Guinness’s barges. Round the Kish in eighty days.
Done half by design. & / /

He flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck.
Now if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn’t.
Chance. We’ll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear.
I hanks. Made me feel so young.

364

Short snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat
long gone. Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too.
And Belfast. I won’t go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him.
Just close my eyes a moment. \\ on t sleep though. Half dream. It
never comes the same. Bat again. No harm in him. Just a few.

O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made
me do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past
the bed met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul to perfume your wife
black hair heave under embon senorita young eyes .Mulvey plump
years dreams return tail end Agcndath swoony lovey showed me her
next year in drawers return next in her next her next.

A bat flew. Here, There. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr
Bloom with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned,
breathed. Just for a few.

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

The clock on the mantelpiece in the priest’s house cooed where
Canon O’Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend John Hughes
S. J. were taking tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops
with catsup and talking about

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

Because it was a little canarybird bird that came out of its little
house to tell the time that Gcrly MacDow-ell noticed the time she was
there because she was as quick anything about a thing like that, was
Gerty MacDowell, and she noticed at once that that foreign gentleman
that was sitting on the rocks looking was

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

365

DESHII. HOLLES

★ DESHtL HOLLES EAMUS. DESHIL HOLLES EAMUS.

Eainus.

Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and womb-
fruit. Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and womb-
fruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and
woinbfruit.

Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa,
boyaboy, hoopsa.

Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive
concerning whatsoever matters arc being held as most profitably by
mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that
which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in
tljcm high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly main-
tain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances
being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation
more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward
may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent
continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately
present constitutes the certain sign of omnipollent nature’s incorrupted
benefaction. For who is there who anything of some significance has
apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour may be the
surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary
anyone so is there inilluininated as not to perceive that as no nature’s
boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every
most just citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his
semblablcs and to tremble lest what had in the past been by the
nation excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar
excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually
traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that
thither ot profundity that that one was audacious excessively who
would liave the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence
can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel
simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with
prophecy of abundance or with diminution’s menace that exalted of
reiteratcdly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?

It is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians
relate, among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature
admirable admired, the art of medicine shall have been highly
honoured. Not to speak of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers,

366

plaguegraves, their greatest doctors, the O Shicls, the O Hickeys, the
O’Lecs, have sedulously set down the divers methods by which the
sick and the relapsed found again health whether the malady had
been the trembling withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in
every public work which in it anything of gravity contains preparation
should be with importance commensurate and therefore a plan was
by them adopted (whether by having preconsidered or as the matura-
tion of experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant
opinions of subsequent inquirers arc not up to the present congrued
to render manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all accident
possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that allhardcst
of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for the copiously
opulent but also for her who not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely
and often not even scarcely could subsist valiantly and for an incon-
siderable emolument was provided.

To her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able
to be molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent
mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received
eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when
the case was so having itself, parturient in vehicle thcreward carrying
desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to
be received into that domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely
in being seen but also even in being related worthy of being praised
that they her by anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them
suddenly to be about to be cherished had been begun she felt!

Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever
in that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives
attended with wholesome food reposeful cleanest swaddles as though
forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to this
no less of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which
arc pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting
spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together
with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by scjunct
females is to tumescence conducive or cases issue in the high sunbnght
wcllbuilt fair home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and repro-
ductitivc, it is come by her thereto to lie in, her term up.

Some man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at mght’s on-
coming. Of Israel’s folk was that man that on earth wandering far had
fared. Stark ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house.

367

Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there
teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth
bairns hale so God’s angel to Mary quoth. Watchers tway there walk,
white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts they still sickness soothing;
in twelve moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are,
for Horne holding wariest ward.

In ward wary the w'atcher hearing come that man mildheartcd eft ris-
ing w'ith swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping
lightens in cyeblink Ireland’s westward welkin! Full she dread that
God the W'reaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins.
Christ’s rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would
rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful
went in Horne’s Itouse.

Loth to irk in Horne’s hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her
stow he ere w'as living with dear wife and lovesomc daughter that
then over land and seafloor nine years had long outwandered. Once
her in townhithc nieeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to
forgive now' he craved with good ground of her allowed that that of
him swiftseen face, hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her
eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning.

As her eyes then ongot his weeds. swart therefor sorrow she feared.
Glad after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O’Hare
Doctor tidings sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him
answered that O’Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that
word to hear that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told
him, ruing death for friend so young, algate sore unwilling God’s
rightwisencss to withsay. She said that he had a fair sweet death
through God His goodness with masspriest to be shriven, holy houscl
and sick men’s oil to his limbs. The man then right earnest asked the
nun of which death the dead man was died and the nun answered
him and said that he was died in Mona island through bellycrab three
year agonc come Childermas and she prayed to God the Allruthful
to have his dear soul in his undeathliness. He heard her sad word?,
in held hat sad staring. So stoo'^ they there both awhile in wanhopc,
sorrowing one with other.

Therefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and
the dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he
came naked forth from his mother’s womb so naked shall he wend
him at the last for to go as he came.

368

The man that was come into the house then spoke to the nursing-
woman and he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there
in childbed. The nursingwoman answered him and said that that
woman was in throes now full three days and that it would be a hard
birth unneth to bear but that now in a little it would be. She said
thereto that she had seen many births of women but never was none
so hard as was that woman’s birth. 1 hen she set it forth all to him
that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened to her
words for he felt w’ith wonder women's woe in the travail that they
have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a
young face for any man to sec but yet was she left after long years a
handmaid. Nine twelve bloodflows chiding her childless.

And whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there
nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sal there at meat. And
there came against the place as they stood a young learning knight
yclej5t Dixon. And the traveller Leopold was couth to him sithen
it had happed that they had had ado each with other in the house of
misericord where this learning knight lay by cause the traveller
Leopold came there to be healed for he was sore w’ounded in his breast
by a spear wherewith a horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten
him for which he did do make a salve of volatile salt and chrism as
much as he might suffice. And he said now that he should go into
that castle for to make merry with them that w’crc there. And the
traveller Leopold said that he should go otherwhither for he was a
man of cautels and a subtle. Also the lady was of his avis and reproved
the learning knight though she trowed well that the traveller had
said thing that was false for his subtility. But the learning knight
would not hear say nay nor do her mandement nc have him in aught
contrarious to his list and he said how it was a marvellous castle. And
the traveller Leopold went into the castle for to rest him for a space
being sore of limb after many marches environing in divers lands and
sometime vencry.

And in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of
Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they
durst not move more for enchantment. And on this board were fright-
ful swords and knives tliat arc niade in a great cavern by swinking
demons out of white flames that they fix in the horns of buffalos and
stags that there abound marvellously. And there were vessels that
are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a

warlock with his breath that he blares into them like to bubbles. And
hill lair cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise
a tuller nc richer, .^nd there was a vat of silver that was moved by
craft to open in the which lay strange fishes withouten heads though
misbelieving men nie that this be possible thing without they see it
natheless they arc so. And these fishes lie in an oily water brought
there from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like
to the juices of the olive press. And also it was marvel to see in that
castle how by magic they make a compost out of fecund wheat
kidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of certain angry spirits that they
do into it swells up wondrously like to a vast mountain. And they
teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out
ol the ground and of the scales of these serpents they brew out a
brewage like to mead.

And the learning knight let pour for childe Leopold a draught and
halp thereto the while all they that were there drank every each.
And childe Leopold did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took
apertly somewhat in amity for he never drank no manner of mead
which he then put by and anon full privily he voided the more part
in his neighbour glass and his neighbour nist not of his wile. And
he sat down in that castle with them for to rest him there awhile.
Thanked be Almighty God.

This meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them
at the reverence of jesu our althcr liege lord to leave their wassailing
for there was above one quick with child a gentle dame, whose time
hied fast. Sir Leopold heard on the upfloor cry on high and he
wondered what cry that it was whether of child or woman and I
marvel, said he, that it be not come or now-. Meseems it dureth
overlong. And he was ware and saw a franklin that hight Lenehan
on that side the table that was older than any of the tothcr and for
that they both were knights virtuous in the one emprise and eke by
cause that he was elder he spoke to him full gently. But, said he,
or it be long too she will bring forth by God His bounty and have
joy of her childing for she hath waited marvellous long. And the
franklin that had drunken said. Expecting each moment to be her
next. Also he took the cup that stood tofore him for him needed
never none asking nor desiring of him to drink and, Now drink, said
he, fully delectably, and he quaffed as far as he might to their both’s
health for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And sir Leopold

370

that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars’ hall and that
was the meekest man and the kindest that ever laid husbandly hand
under hen and that was the very truest knight of the world one that
ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the
cup. Woman’s woe with wonder pondering.

Now let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent
to be drunken an they might. There was a sort of scholars along
either side the board, that is to wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint
Mary Merciable’s with other his fellows Lynch and Madden, scholars
of medicine, and the franklin that hight Lcnchan and one trom Alba
Longa, one Crotthers, and young Stephen that had mien of a frerc
that was at head of the board and Costello that men elepen Punch
Costello all long of a mastery of him erewhile gested (and of all them,
reserved young Stephen, he was the most drunken that demanded
still of more mead) and beside the meek sir Leopold. But on young
Malachi they waited for that he promised to have come and such as
intended to no goodness said how he had broke his avow. .And sir
Leopold sat with them for he bore fast friendship to sir Simon and to
this his son young Stephen and for that his languor becalmed him
there after longest wanderings insomuch as they feasted him for
that time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red him, love led on
with will to wander, loth to leave.

For they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns
each gen other as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden
maintaining that put such case it were hard the wife to die (for so it
had fallen out a matter of some year agonc with a woman of Eblana
in Horne’s house that now was trespassed out of this world and the
self night next before her death all leeches and pothccaries had taken
counsel of her case). And they said farther she should live because
in the beginning they said the woman should bring torth in pain and
wherefore they that were of this imagination affirmed how young
Madden had said truth for he had conscience to let her die. And
not few and of these was young Lynch were in doubt that the world
was now right evil governed as it was never other howbeit the mean
people believed it otherwise hut the law nor his judges did provide
no remedy. A redress God grant. This was scant said but aJl cried
with one acclaim nay, by our Virgin Mother, the wife should live
and the babe to die. In colour whereof they waxed hot upon that
head what with argument and what for their drinking but the franklin

37 *

Lenchan was prompt each when to pour them ale so that at the least
way mirth niight not lack. Then young Madden showed all the
whole affair and when he said how that she was dead and how for holy
religion sake by rede of palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had
made to Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not
let her death whereby they were all wondrous grieved. To whom young
Stephen had these words following. Murmur, sirs, is eke oft among lay
folk. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, the one in
hmbo gloom, the other in purge fire. But, gramcrcy, what of those
Godpossibled souls that we nightly impossibilise, which is the sin against
the Holy Ghost, Very God. Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he
said, our lust is brief. We are means to those small creatures within
us and nature has other ends than we. Then said Dixon junior to
Punch Costello wist he what ends. But he had overmuch drunken
and the best word he could have of him w’as that he would ever dis-
honest a woman whoso she were or wife or maid or leman if it so
fortuned him to be delivered of his spleen of lustihead. Whereat
Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Malachi’s praise of that beast
the unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh by his horn the
other all this while pricked forward -with their jibes wherewith they
did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his
engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to
do. Thereat laughed they all right jocundly only young Stephen
and sir Leopold which never durst laugh too open by reason of a
strange humour which he would not bewray and also for that he rued
for her that bare whoso she might be or wheresoever. Then spoke
young Stephen orgulous of mother Church that would cast him out
of her bosom, of law of canons, of Lilith, patron of abortions, of
bigness wrought by wind of seeds of brightness or by potency of
vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the influence of
the Occident or by the reck of moonflower or an she lie with a woman
which her man has but lain with, eftctu iecutOy or peradventure in
her bath according to the opinions of Averroes and Moses Mai-
momdes. He said also how at the end of the second month a human
soul was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for
God s greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a
dam to bring forth beastly should die by canon for so saith he that
holdcth the fisherman’s seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock
was o y church for ail ages founded. All they bachelors then asked

372

of sir Leopold would he in like case so jeopard her person as risk life
lo save life. A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and,
laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his wont was, that as it
was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as might a
layman, and agreeing also with iiis experience of so scldonj seen an
accident it was good for that Mother Church belike at one blow had
birth and death pence and in such sort delivcrly he scaped their
questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant
word. Which hearing young Stephen was a marvellous glad man
and he averred that he who stcalcth from the poor lendeth to the
Lord for he was of a wild manner when he was drunken and that he

was now’ in that taking it appeared eftsoons.

But sir Leopold was passing grave maugre his word by cause he
still had pity of the tcrrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their
labour and as he was minded of his good lady Marion that had borne
him an only manchild which on his eleventh day on live had died
and no man of art could save so dark is destiny. And she w’as wondrous
stricken of heart for that evil hap and for his burial did him on a fair
corselet of lamb’s wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish
utterly and lie akeled (for it was then about the midst of the w’lnter)
and now sir Leopold that had of his body no manchild for an heir
looked upon him his friend’s son and was shut up in sorrow tor his
forepassed happiness and as sad as he was that him failed a son ot
such gentle courage (for all accounted him of real parts) so grieved
he also in no less measure for young Stephen for that he lived riotously
with those wastrels and murdered his goods with whores.

About that present time young Stephen filled all cups that stood
empty so as there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not
sha^wed their approach from him that still plied it very busily who,
praying for the intentions of the sovereign pontiff, he gave thern tor
a pledge the vicar of Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now
drink we, quod he, of this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not
indeed parcel of my body but my soul’s bodiment. Leave ye fraction
of bread to them that live by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for
any want for this will comfort more than the other will dismay. Sec
ye here. And he showed them glistering coins of the tribute and
goldsmiths’ notes the worth of two pound nineteen shilling that he
had, he said, for a song which he writ. They all admired m see the
foresaid riches in such dearth of money as was herebefore. His words

373

were then these as followcth: Know all men, he said, time’s ruins build
eternity s mansions. What means this? Desire’s wind blasts the thorn-
tree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the
rood of time. Mark me now. In woman’s womb word is made flesh
but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word
that sliaH not pass away. This is the posicreation. Omnis caro ad te
venter. No question but her name is puissant who aveniried the dear
corse of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and
mother most venerable and Bernardus saith aptly that she hath an

an almightiness’ of

petition because she is the second Eve and she won us, saith Augustine
too, whereas that other, our grandam, which we are linked up with
by successive anastomosis of navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and
pneration, for a penny pippin. But here is the matter now. Or she
knew him, that second I say, and was but creature of her creature
vergtne madre Jiglia di tuo Jiglio or she knew him not and then stands
she in the one denial or ignorancy w-ith Peter Piscator who lives in
the house that Jack built and with Joseph the Joiner patron of the
happy deinisc of all unhappy marriages pane que M. Leo Taxil nous
a dit que qut I avatr mtse dans cettejichue position c'Uait le sacri pigeon,
ventre de Dteul Entweder transsubstantiality oder consubstantialltv
but in no case subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon it for a very
scury word. A pregnancy w'ithout joy, he said, a birth without pangs,
a body without blemish, a belly without bigness. Let the lewd with
faith and fervour worship. With will will we withstand, withsay.

Hereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and
would sing a baw-dy catch Staboo Stabella about a wench that was put
m pod of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did now attack;
i he Jirst three months she was not well, Staboo, when here nurse Quigley
from the door ang’erly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was it
not meet as she remembered them being her mind was to have all
orderly against lord Andrew came for because she W'as jealous that
no gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour of her guard. It was

fn "matron of a sedate look and Christian walking,

m habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did

of r"!. Punch Costello was

of them all en.braided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness

me and with menace of blandishments others whiles all chodc with

him, a murrain seize the dolt, w'hat a devil he would be at, thou chuff,

374

thou puny, thou got in the peascstraw, thou loscl, thou chittcriing,
thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut
up his drunken drool out ot that like a curse ot' God ape, the good sir
Leopold that had tor his cognisance the dower of quiet, margerain
gentle, advising also the tiiuc’s occasion as most sacred and most worthy
to be most sacred. In Horne’s house rest should reign.

To be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon ot .Mary
in Ecclcs, goodly grinning, asked young Stephen what was the reason
whv he had not cided to take friar’s vows and he answered him
obedience in the womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty
all his days. Master Lcnehan at this made return that he had heard
of those nefarious deeds and how, as he heard hereof counted, he had
besmirched the lily virtue of a confiding female which was corruption
of minors and they all intershowed it too, waxing merry and toasting
to his fathership. But he said very entirely it was clean contrary to
their suppose for he was the eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat
mirth grew in them the more and they rehearsed to him his curious
rite of wedlock for the disrobing and deflowering of spouses, as the
priests use in Madagascar island, she to be in guise of white and
saffron, her groom in while and grain, with burning of nard and tapers,
on a bridebed w-hilc clerks sung kyries and the anthem Ut novetur
sexus omnis corporis mysterium till she was there unmaided. He gave
them then a much admirable hymen minim by those delicate poets
Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is in their
Maid's Tragedy that was writ for a like twining of lovers: To bed^ to
bed^ was the burden of it to be played with accompanable concent
upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet cpithalame of most mollifica-
tivc suadcncy for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus
of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of
connubial communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, ^
joyed, but, harkce, young sir, better were they named Beau Mount’
and Lecher for, by my truth, of such a mingling much might come.
Young Stephen said indeed to his best remembrance they had but
the one doxy between them and she of the stews to make shift with in
delights amorous for life ran very high in those days and the custom
of the country approved with it. Greater love than this, he said, no
man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend. Go thou and
do likew'ise. Thus, or words to that effect, said Zarathustra, sonKtime
regius professor of French letters to the university of Oxtail nor

375

breathed there ever that man to whom mankind was more beholden
Bring a syanger within thy tower ,t will go hard but thou wilt have
the secondbest bed^ Orate, jratres, pro memetipso. And all the people
-hall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy generations and thy dLs of
old, how thou settedst little by me and by my word and broughtest
in a stranger to my gates to commit fornication in my sight and to
wax fa, and k,ck like Jeshurun,. Therefore has, ,hou linked agalns?
•he l.gh, and has, made me, ,hy lord. ,o be ,he slave of servants

thou done this abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for a
merchant of jalaps and didst deny me to the Roman and the Indian
of dark speech with whom thy daughters did lie luxuriously? Look
forth now my people, upon the land of behest, even from Horcb

a and flowing with milk and money. But thou hast suckled me w-ith
a bitter milk: my moon and my sun thou hast quenched for ever.
And thou hast left me alone for ever in the dark ways of my bitter-
ness: and with a kiss of ashes hast thou kissed my mouth. I’his tenc-
brosny of the interior, he proceeded to say. hath not been illumined
by the wit of the scptuagint nor so much as mentioned for the Orient
from on high which brake hell’s gates visited a darkness that was
mraneous. Assuefaction minorates atrocities (as Tully saith of his

of con^b^ r*'"' no blister

of combustion. The adiaphanc in the noon of life is an Egypt’s plague

prenativity and postmortemity is their r4st
proper u6i and fuomoi/o. And as the ends and ultimate of all things
accord in some mean and measure with their inceptions and originals,
that same multiphcit concordance which leads forth growth froin birth
accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and
ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with
our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life; wx wail, batten
sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die; over us dead they bend. First

waVrh- bulrushes, a bed of fasciated

attics, at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid

the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows
c ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes w-c shall thereby be
“if "^"'^bciher to Tophet or to Edenville in the like way is
all hidden when we would backward see from what region of remote-
ness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched his whcnccness.

376

Thereto Punch Costello roared out mainly chanson but

loudly bid them lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast majestu
longstablished vault, the crystal palace of the Creator all in applepie
order, a penny for him who finds the pea.

Behold the mansion reared by dedal yack.

See the malt stored in many a rejiuent sack,

In the proud cirque of fackjohn s bivouac.

A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled, back. Loud
on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came
now the storm that hist his heart. And Master Lynch bade him have
a care to flout and witwanton as the god self was angered tor his
hcllpratc and paganry. And he that had erst challenged to be so
doughty waxed pale as they might all mark and shrank together and
his pitch that was before so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite
plucked down and his heart shook within the cage of his breast as he
tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some mock and some jeer
and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which Master Lenchan
vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a blow-
on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old
Nobodaddy w'as in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he
would not lag behind his lead. But this was only to dye his despera-
tion as cowed he crouched in Horne’s hall. He drank indeed at one
draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it thundered long
rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden, being godly
certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of doom and
Master Bloom, at the braggart’s side spoke to him calming words to
slumber his great fear, advertising how it was no other thing but a
hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the thunder-
head, look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a natural

phenomenon. ^

But was young Boasthard’s fear vanquished by Calmer s words.

No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could
not* by words be done away. And w-as he then neither calm like the
one nor godly like the other? He was neither as much as he w’ould
have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have
found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived
withal? Indeed not for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard

377

he then in thut dap the voice o( the god liririgforth or, what Calmer
said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, he could not but hear
unless he had plugged up the tube Understanding (which he had not
done), l or through that tube he saw that he was in the land of
I honouM non where he must tor a certain one day die as he was like the
rest too .1 j>.ovmg s1h>w. And would he not accept to die like the rest
and pass away? By no means would he and make more shows according
as men do w ith wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do
by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which
IS called Beheve-on-Mc, that is the land of promise which behoves to
the king Dclighttul and shall be for ever where there is no death and
no birth ncMther wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as
many as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and
Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way
he tell in with a certain whore of an cyepleasing exterior whose name,
she said, is Bird-in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongw-ays from
the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you prettv
man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay
« him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named
1 wo-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence.

This was it what all that company that sat there at commons in
Manse of Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this
whore Bird-in-thc-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters
and a wicked devil) they would strain the last but they would make at
her and know her. For regarding Bclievc-on-Mc they said it was
nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for,
first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest
grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these
words printed on them. Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shamefacc
and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the
monsters they cared not for them, for Preservative had given them a
stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt
neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this
same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their
blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale,
Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr
Cautious Calmer. Wherein, O wretched company, were ye all
deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous
rage that he would presently lift his arm and spill their sduls for their

378

abuses and their spillings done by ilietn contrariwise to his word whicli
forth to bring brcnningly biddeth.

So Thursday sixteenth June Fatk. Dignam laid in clav of an
apoplexy and after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman
coming in by water a fifty tnile or thereabout with turt saying the
seed won’t sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily,
the quags and tofts too. Hard to breathe and all the young quicks
clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back as no man
remembered to be without. The rosy buds all gone brown and
spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots
that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they
knew, the big w'ind of last February a year that did havoc the land
so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as
said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in ti c west, biggish
swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the wcathcrwisc
poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past
ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace
of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower,
the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief,
womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came.
In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke’s lawn, thence through Merrion
green up to Holies street, a swash of water running that was before
bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more
crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitz-
gibbon’s door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the
college lands) Mai. Mulligan a gentleman’s gentleman that had but
come from Mr Moore’s the writer’s (that was a papish but is now, folk
say, a good Williamite) chanced against .Alec. Bannon in a cut bob
(which arc now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that was new-
got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mai M’s
brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the
earth he docs there, he bound hon^c and he to Andrew Horne’s being
stayed for to crush a cup of w-inc, so he said, but would tell him of a
skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel and all this while
poured with rain and so both together on to Horne’s. There Lcop.
Bloom of Crawford’s journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely
brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy, Vin.
Lynch, a Scots fellow. Will. Madden, T. Lcnchan, very sad for a
racinghorse he fancied and Stephen D. Lcop. Bloom there for a

379

languor he had but was now better, he having dreamed tonight a
strange fancy ot his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in pair of
I urkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be for a change
and Mistress Purctoy there, that got in through pleading her belly,
and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the mid-
vvives sore put to it and can’t deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop
that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very heavy
more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks they say,
but God give her soon issue. This her ninth chick to live, I hear
and Lady day bit off her last chick’s nails that was then a twelvemonth
and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand
m the king s bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the
.Sacrament and is to he seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys
off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel
or in a punt he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a
hnc bag 1 hear. In sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed
and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind
and w.atcr fire shall come for a prognostication of Malachi’s almanac
(and I hear that .Mr Russell has done a prophetical charm of the same
gist out of the Hindustanish for his farmer’s gazette) to have three
things in all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old
crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess
with their queeritics no telling how'.

With this came up Lenehan to the feet of the table to say how the
letter was in that night’s gazette and he made a show to find it about
him (for he sw-ore with an oath that he had been at pains about it)
but on Stephen’s persuasion he gave over to search and was bidden to
sit near by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gcntle-
nian that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged
of women, horseflesh, or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth
he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the
coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul’s
men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoatcers, ladies of the bagnio and other
rogues of the game or with a chanccable catchpole or a tipstaff often
at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sack-
possets much loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boiling-cook’s
and if lie had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter
oUripes with a bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself
off with his tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot

380

thst every niother's son of them would burst their sides. The other,
Costello, that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a talc. Faith,
no, he says, Frank (that was his name), tis all about Kerry cows that
are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang,
says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it. There s
as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he
offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed
wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the
chief design of his embassy as he was sharpset. Mori aux vac/ies, says
Frank then in the French language that had been indentured to a
brandy shipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French
like a gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought
that his father, a hcadborough, who could ill keep him to school to
learn his letters and the use of the globes, matriculated at the university
to study the mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a
raw colt and was more familiar with the justiciary and the parish
beadle than with his volumes. One time he would be a playactor,
then a sutler or a wclsher, then nought would keep him from the
bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to
hoof it on the roads with the Romany folk, kidnapping a squire’s heir
by favour of moonlight or fccking maid s linen or choking chickens
behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat has lives and
back again with naked pockets as many more to his father the head-
borough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him. What, says
Mr Leopold with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift
of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning
going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe ’tis so bad,
says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of
springers, greasy hoggets and wether wools, having been some years
before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffc, a worthy salesmasier that drove
his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin LoWs
yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he. More like
’tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Stephen, a little moved but
very handsomely, told him no such matter and that he had dispatches
from the emperor's chief tailticklcr thanking him for the hospitality,
that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquotcd cowcatcher
in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the bull by
horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He’ll find
himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that s

Irish says he Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Stephen
and he sent the ale purling about. An Irish bull in an English china-
shop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was
sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattle breeder of
hem all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr
Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and
a plumper ana a portlier bull, says he. never shit on shamrock. He
had horns galore, a coat of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out
of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs
and rolhngpins followed after him hanging his bullints in daisv-
chains. \\hat for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over
farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a
college of doctors who were no better off than himself So be off-
now, says he, and do all my cousin german the Lord Harrv tells you
and take ^ t-^rmer s blessing, and with that he slapped his' posteriors
J^ry soundly But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says

other so hat maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that
they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the
dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue
then he with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of
all Ireland. Another then put in his word; And they dressed him
he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and
ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over

w! h of the road

with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that

of the f ^thf u “"**^"‘* ^>' the father

of the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he

could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames

and damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon

thd laJvsh '^^' i “P to show

their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bull's

Trl^f ^ i7 /r ^ all the land but green

grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his mind) and^crc

I °f the island with a

printed nouce. saying: By the lord Harry green is the grass that

grows on the ground. And. says Mr Dixon, if ever he got Lnt of I

catticraidcr in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husband-

382

man in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a
bag of rapesced out he run amok over half the countryside rooting up
with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry s orders.
There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr \ inccnt, and the
lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and
an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I’ll meddle
in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with
the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening,
says .Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to
go to dinner after winning a boatracc {he had spade oars for himscll
but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with
pitchforks) he discovered in himselt a wondcrtul likeness to a bull
and on picking up a blackthumbcd chapbook that he kept in the
pantry he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant
of the famous champion bull of the Romans, Bos Bovuniy which is
good bog Latin for boss of the show. After that, says .Mr Vincent,
the lord Harry put his head into a cow’s drinking trough in the
presence of all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his
new name. Then, with the water running off him, he got into an old
smock and skirt that had belonged to his grandmother and bought a
grammar of the bull’s language to study but he could never learn a
word of it except the first personal pronoun which he copied out big
and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he filled his
pockets with chalk to write it up on what took his fancy, the side of
a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short he
and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt.
They were, says Mr Stephen, and the end was that the men of the
island, seeing no help was toward as the ungrate women were all of
one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles
of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang
their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head
between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up
the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullginc run, pushed
off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America.
Which was the occasion, says .Mr Vincent, of the composing by a
boatswain of that rollicking chanty:

%

— Pope Peter s but a pissab/J.

A man's a man jor a' that.

383

Our worthy acquaintance, Mr Malachi Mulligan, now appeared
in the door^^'ay as the students were finishing their apologue accom-
panied with a friend whom he had just rencountered, a young gentle-
man. his name Alec Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his
intention to buy a colour or a cornelcy in the fencibles and list for the
wars. Mr Mulligan was civil enough to express some relish of it all
the more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of the
very evil that had been touched on. Whereat he handed round to the
company a set of pasteboard cards which he had had printed that day
at Mr Quinnell’s bearing a legend printed in fair italics; Mr Malachi
Mulligan, Fertiliser and Incubator, Lambay Island. His project, as
he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle
pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and
sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest
task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us
hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it
smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. Tis as cheap sitting as
standing. Mr Mulligan accepted of the invitation and, expatiadng
on his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought
by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and
the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to con-
jugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether
the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or From proclivities
acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch
defrauded of Its dearest pledges; and to reflect upon so many agreeable
females with rich jointures, a prey for the vilest bonzes, who hide
their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their
womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin
when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the
inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at
hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep. To curb
t^his inconvenient (which he concluded due to a suppression of latent
heat), having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected

Tj "f; /solved to purchase in fee simple for ever

the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Talbot de Mala-
hide, a Tory gentleman of not much in favour with our ascendancy
party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be
named Omphalos with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion
of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation

384

of any female of what grade of life soever who should there direct
to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural.
Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for his
pains. The poorest kitchcnwcnch no less than the opulent lady ot
fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm
persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his
nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a
diet of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the Hesh of these
latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose,
both broiled and stewed w'ith a blade of mace and a pod or two of
capsicum chillies, .^ftcr this homily which he delivered with much
warmth of asseveration Mr .Mulligan in a trice put otf trom his hat a
kerchief with which he had shielded it. I he both, it seems, had
been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending their pace had
taken water, as might be observed by Mr Mulligan s smallc thes
of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald. His project
meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won
hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary s excepted to it,
asking w-ith a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to New-
castle. Mr Mulligan however made court to the scholarly by an
apt quotation from the classics which as it dwelt upon his memory
seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: Talts
ac tanta depravatio hujus seculi, O quirius, ut matres jamiliarum nostra
lascivas cujusitbet semtviri itb'tci titillationes testibus ponderosit atque
excelsis erectionibus centurionum Romanorum magnopert anteponunt:
while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of
the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and
doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and duck.

Valuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper
man of his person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress
with animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the
atmospherics while the company lavished their encomiums upon the
project he had advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, over-
joyed as he was at a passage that had befallen him, could not forbear
to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr Mulligan, now perceiving the
table, asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the
stranger, he made him a civil bow and said. Pray, sir, was you in
need of any professional assistance we could givc.^ Who, upon his
offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper

distance, and replied that lie was come there about a lady, now an
inmate ot Horne’s house, that was in an interesting condition, poor
lady, from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh) to know
If her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table,
took on to ask Mr Mulligan himself '^h.-thcr his incipient ventri-
potence, upon which he rallied him. betokeneu .m ovoblastic gestation
in the prostatic utricle or male w-omb or was due as with the noted
physician, Mr Austin Meldon. to a wolf in the stomach. For answer
Mr Mulligan, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely
below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of
Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though ’tis
pity shes a trollop): There’s a belly that never bore a bastard. This
uas so happy a conceit that it renew-ed the storms of mirth and threw
the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The spry

rattle had run on jn the same vein of mimicry but for some larum^^in
the antechamber.

Here the listener, who was none other than the Scotch student, a
little fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest
lashion with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at
a salient point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the
Obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time
by a questioning poise ot the head (a whole century of polite breeding
had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an cquivalcm
but contrary balance of the head, asked the narrator as plainly as was
ever done in words if he might treat him w-ith a cup of it. Mau bien
sur, noble stranger, said he cheerily, et mille compliments. That you
may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to
crown my felicity. But, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust
in my wall^et and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would
accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground
and give thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me
by the Giver of good things. With these words he approached the
goblet to his hps, took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked
his hair and opening his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from
a silk riband that very picture which he had cherished ever since her
hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of
tenderness. Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did
with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and
her new coquette cap (a gift for her feast day as she told me) in such

386

an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, pon my conscience,
even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver
yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the^ field
for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God I
thank thee as the Author of my daysl Thrice happy will he be whom
so amiable a creature will bless with her favour'^. sigh of affection
gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the locket in
his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Beneficent Dissemin-
ator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal must
be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free
and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover
in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband ot maturer years.
But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect
are all our sublunary joys! .Maledicity I Would to God that foresight
had remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to tlv k
of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither ot
us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to
his forehead, tomorrow' will be a new’ day and, thousand thunders,

I know of a marchartd de capous. Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can
have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a
lady from wetting. Tut, Tut! cries Lc Fdcondateur, tripping in, my
friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just
cracked a half bottle lui in a circle of the best wits of the town),
is my authority that in Cape Horn, ventrt biche, they have a rain that
will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that
violence, he tells me, sans blague, has sent more than one luckless
fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world. Poohl A Uvre.
cries Monsieur Lynch. The clumsy things arc dear at a sou. One
umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such
stopgaps. No woman of any wit W’ould wear one. My dear Kitty
told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would
starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing
piquantly and whispering in my car though there was none to snap
her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing,
has implanted it in our heart and it has become a household word
that il y a deux choses for which the innocence of our original garb,
in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest nay,
the only, garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher
as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with

her tongue the outer chamber of my car), the first is a bath . . . but at
this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which
promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge.

Amid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and
while all were conjecturing what might be the cause Miss Callan
entered and, having spoken a few' words in a low tone to young
Mr Dixon, retired with a profound bow to the company. The
presence even for a moment among a party of debauchees of a woman
endued with every quality of modesty and not less severe than beauti-
ful refrained the humourous sallies even of the most licentious but her
departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me silly,
said Costello, a low fellow who w-as fuddled. A monstrous fine bit
of cowfleshl ril be sworn she has rendezvoused you. What, you dog?
Have you a w-ay with them? Gad’s bud. Immensely so, said Mr
Lynch. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice.
Demme, docs not Doctor O’Gargle chuck the nuns there under the
chin? As I look to be saved I had it from my Kitty who has been
wardmaid there any time these seven months. Lawksamcrcy, doctor,
cried the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish
simper and immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a
body! Drat the man! Bless me, I’m all of a wibblywobbly. Why,
you’re as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem that you are! May
this pot of four half choke me, cried Costello, if she ain’t in the family
way. I knows a lady what’s got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes
on her. The young surgeon, however, rose and begged the company
to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just then informed him that he
was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had been pleased to put
a period to the sufferings of the lady who was enceinte which she had
borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given birth to a bouncing
boy. I want patience, said he, with those who without wit to enliven
or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the
reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon
the earth. I am positive when I say that if need were I could produce
a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which,
so far from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the
human breast. I cannot away with them. What ? Malign such an
one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the
astonishment of ours and at an instant the most momentous that can
befall a puny child of clay ? Perish the thought 1 I shudder to think

of the future of a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown
and where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in Ijouse
of Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those
present on the by and repaired to the door. A njurmur ot approval
arose from all and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more
ado, a design which would have been erf'cctcd nor would he have
received more than his bare deserts had he not abridged his trans-
gression by affirming with a horrid imprecation (tor he swore a round
hand) that he was as good a son of the true fold as ever drew brea'h.
Stap my vitals, said he, them was always the sentiments of honest
Frank Costello w’hich I was bred up most particular to honour thy
father and thy mother that had the best hand to a rolypoly or a nasty
pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on with a loving heart.

To revert to Mr Bloom who, after his first entry, had been conscious
of some impudent mocks which he, however, had borne witl, being
the fruits of that age upon which it is commonly charged that ii knows
not pity. The young sparks, it is true, w'cre as full of extra: agancies
as overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discusfions were
difficultly understood and not often nice; their testiness and jutrageous
mo/s were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were t^cy scrupu-
lously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal
spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an
unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed
to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosit' born out of
wedlock and thrust like a crookback teethed and fee first into the
world, which the dint of the surgeon’s pliers in his skull lent indeed
a colour to, so as it put him in thought of that missing 'ink of creation’s
chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for
more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had passed
through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and being of a wary
ascendancy and self a man of a rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart
to repress all motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting them with
the readiest precaution, foster within his brea\t that plenitude of
sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find
tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create themselves wits at
the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which he never did hold
with) to them he would concede neither to bear the name nor to herit
the tradition of a proper breeding: while for such that, having lost all
forbearance, can lose no more, there remainel the sharp antidote of

389

experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate and in-
glorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with mettlesome youth
which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the
severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer express it) for
eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity
upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was about
her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister’s words he had
reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be owned,
not a little alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so auspicated
after an ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the mercy as
well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being.

Accordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to
express his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance
to express one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid
genius not to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her
confinement since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers.
The dressy young blade said it was her husband’s that put her in that
expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian
matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table
so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujcrum
was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring
through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he
calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event
would burst anon. ’Slife, I’ll be round with you. I cannot but extol
the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another
child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own fashion,
though the same young blade held with his former view that another
than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a
linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every
household. Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonder-
fully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the
puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries
of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic titles should
suince to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into
exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent
have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added, it is mayhap to
relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress them for I have
more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together
But with what fitness, let it be asked, of the noble lord? his patron,

390

has this alien, whom the concession ot a graciou' prince has admitted
to civil rights, constituted himsclt the lord paramount ot our internal
polity? Where is now that gratitude whicli loyalty should have
counselled? During the recent war whenever the enemy had a tem-
porary advantage with his granados did this traitor to his kind not
seize that moment to discharge his piece against the empire ot which
he is a tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his tour
per cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received?
Or is it that from being a deludcr of others he has become at last his
own dupe as he is, if report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer?
Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber ot a respectable lady,
the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections
upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed
highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman
she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate
prerogative to listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than
the dcrisior\ of the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very
pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the tics ot
nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn
from the lowest strata of society. Nay, had the hussy’s scouringbrush
not been her tutelary angel it had gone with her as hard as with
Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish
asperity is notorious and in Mr CufFc s hearing brought upon him
from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as
straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach
that gospel. Has he not nearer home a secdficld that lies fallow for
the want of a ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is
second nature and an opprobium in middle life. If he must dispense
his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to
restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice
consist better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital
breast is the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to
adduce. The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console
him for a consort neglected and debauched but this new exponent
of morals and healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when
rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant
in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have
lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is
stagnant, acid and inoperative.

39 *

The news was imparted widi a circumspection recalling the cere-
monial usages of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian
to the junior medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced
to the delegation that an heir had been born. When he had betaken
himself to the women’s apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony
of the afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic
affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous
exhaustion and approbation, the delegates, chafing under the length
and solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence
would palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and
officer rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues.
In vain tlie voice of Mr Canvasser Bloom was heard endeavouring to
urge, to mollify, to restrain. The moment was too propitious for the
display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union
among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation w-as
successively eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers,
the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that
rarer form, with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as
the Childs murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned plea
of Mr Advocate Bushc which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully
accused, the rights of primogeniture and king’s bounty touching twins
and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated and dissimulated,
acardiac Jatus in jatu, aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnatia of
certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Mulligan) in
consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the
medial line so that (as he said) one car could hear what the other spoke,
the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation of labour
pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the
premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the
actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial
insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent
upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetuation of the species
in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing
manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers Sturzgehurt, the
recorded instances of multigeminal, twikindled and monstruous births
conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents
— in a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has
classified in his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations.
The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were

392

examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the
state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step
over a country stile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should
strangle her creature and tlie injunction upon her in the event of a
yearning, ardently and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand
against that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as the
scat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, super-
numerary digits, negro’s inkle, strawberry mark and portwinc stain
were alleged by one as a primajacle and natural hypothetical explana-
tion of swinehcaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not
forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis
of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy
of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in
such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent
to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these
views with such heat as almost carried conviction the theory of copula-
tion between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his
own avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur
W’hich the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us
in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words
was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been
evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate .Mulligan in that vein of
pleasantry which none better than he knew know’ to affect, postulating
as the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contempo-
raneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate
Madden and Mr Candidate Lynch regarding the juridical and
theological dilemma in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing
the other, the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Can-
vasser Bloom for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Dedalus.
Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by preternatural gravity
that curious dignity of the garb with which he w’as invested or in
obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly, and as some thought
perfunctorily, the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put
asunder what God has joined.

But Malachias’ talc began to frceec them with horror. He conjured
up the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid
back and in the recess appeared . . . Haines! Which of us did not
feel his flesh creep? He had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one
hand, in the other a phial marked Poison. Surprise, horror, loathing

393

vsere depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghastly grin.
I anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh,
for which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the
murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The inferno
has no terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages,
\Nhat way would 1 be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping
Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me
the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland’s, is in this
life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime. Distractions, rook-
shooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised
the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me.
Dope is my only hope. . , Ah! Destruction! The black panther!
With a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant
later his head appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at
Westland row station at ten past eleven. He was gone! Tears gushed
from the eyes of the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven,
murmuring; The vendetta of Mananaan! The sage repeated Ltx
talionis. The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring
the immense debtorship for a thing done. Malachias, overcome by
emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. Haines was the third
brother. His real name was Childs. The black panther was himself
the ghost of his own father. He drank drugs to obliterate. For this
relief much thanks. The lonely house by the graveyard is uninhabited.
No soul will live there. The spider pitches her web in the solitude.
The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on it. It is haunted.
Murderer’s ground.

What is the age of the soul of man.^ As she hath the virtue of the
chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with
the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age change-
able as her mood. No longer is Leopold, as he sits there, ruminating,
chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and
holder of a modest substance in the funds. He is young Leopold, as
in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, prestol),
he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously
manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clam-
brassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise,
and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother’s thought. Or it is
the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that
was a day!), already on the road, a fullflcdgcd traveller for the family

394

firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for
show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas, a thing nov. ot the
past!), and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that haltwon
housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or tor a budding virgin
shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoms.
The scent, the smile but more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous
address brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head ot
the firm seated with Jacob’s pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle
(a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through
round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe ot a month
before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young
knighterrant recedes, shrivels, to a tiny speck within the mist. Now
he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. VN ho
can say ^ The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling

night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first
Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and
of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the
heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal
university. Bridie! Bridie Kelly! He will never forget the name,
ever remember the night, first night, the bridenight. They arc
entwined in nethermost darkness, the wilier with the willed, and in an
instant ifiatl) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart?
Nay, fair reader. In a breath ‘twas done but— hold! Back! It must
not bcl In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is
the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the
sunnygoldcn babe of day. No, Uopoldl Name and memory solace
thee not. That youthful Ulusion of thy strength was taken from thee
and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to

be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph. e • u

The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the
infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions
of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where
grey twUight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pastureficlds.
shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars She folloi^
her mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight
phantoms are they yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim
shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive
skull. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone, Agcndath is a waste
land, a home of scrccchowls and the sandblind upupa. Nctaim, the

395

golden, is no more. And on the highway of the clouds they come,
muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark!
Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating
lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of
Bashan and of B.abylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping
to the sunken sea, Liicus Mortis, Ominous, revengeful zodiacal host!
1 hey moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the
trufiipcted with the tusked, the lionmaned the giantantlered, snouter
and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving
moaning multitude, murderers of the sun.

Onward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with
horrible gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the
equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay
to heaven’s own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo.
And, lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride,
harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Martha, thou
lost one, Millicent. the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene docs
she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antc-
lucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what
do you call it gossamer! It floats, it flows about her starborn ficsb
and loose it streams emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained
on currents of cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling,
writhing in the skies a mysterious writing til! after a myriad meta-
morphoses of symbol, it blazes. Alpha, a ruby and trianglcd sign upon
the forehead of Taurus. ^

Francis was reminding Stephen of years before when they had
been at school together in Conmee’s time. He asked about Glaucon,
Alcibiadcs, Pisistratus. Where were they now.> Neither knew. You
have spoken of the past and its phantoms, Stephen said. Why think
of them? If I call them into life across the waters of Lethe will not
the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous
Stephanoumenos, bullockbcfriending bard, am lord and giver of their
life. He encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vinelcaves,
smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, Vincent said to
him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and greatly
more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father. All who
wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring forth the
work you meditate. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no,
Vincent, Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him, have

396

no fear. He could not leave his mother an orphan. The young man s
face grew dark. AW could see how hard it was for him to be reminded
of his promise and of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from
the feast had not the noise of voices allayed the smart. .Madden had
lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider’s name: Lcnehan
as much more. He told them of the race. 1 he flag fell and, huuh,
off, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with O. .Madden up. She was
leading the field: all hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not
contain herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre
wins! But in the straight on the run home when all were in close
order the dark horse Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her.
All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her eyes were sad anemones.
Juno, she cried, 1 am undone. But her lover consoled her and brought
her a bright casket of gold in which lay some oval sugarplums which
she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking fine whip, said
Lcnehan, is W. Lane. Four winners yesterday and three today. What
rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo
the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the
ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said with
a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this hand,
shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you
remember her, Vincent? 1 wish you could have seen my queen today,
Vincent said, how young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair
beside her) in her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know
the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom:
the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating
by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone
a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Pcriplcpomcnos
sells in his booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth
but the arm with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischiev-
ously when I pressed too close. A week ago she lay ill, four days on
the couch, but today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is
more taking then. Her posies too! Mad romp that it is, she had
pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in your car, my friend,
you will not think who met us as we left the field. Conmec himself.
He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with,
I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glyccra or Chloc to keep the page.
The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to
reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there

397

for the very trees adore her. VV'^hen Conmee had passed she glar^ced
at her lovely echo in the little mirror she carries. But he had been
kind. In going by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind,
Lenchan said. If I had poor luck with Bass’s mare perhaps this draught
of his may serve me more propenscly. He was laying his hand upon
a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger
and to the scarlet label. Warily, Malachi whispered, preserve a druid
silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened
from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a
gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think
it, Stephen.^ 7 hcosophos told me so, Stephen answered, whom in a
previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of
karmic law'. The lords of the moon, Thcosophos told me, an orange-
fiery shipload from planet Alpha of the lunar chain, would not assume
the etheric doubles and these were therefore incarnated by the ruby-
coloured egos from the second constellation.

However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise
about him being in some description of a doldrums or other or mes-
merised, which was entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest
character, was not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs,
while the above was going on, were at this juncture commencing to
exhibit symptoms of animation, w’as as astute if not astuter than any
man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have
found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop. During the
past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring hard at a certain
amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-
on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others right
opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to attract
anyone s remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply
and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to
himself, which put quite an altogether different complexion on the
proceedings, after the moment before’s observations about boyhood
days and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his
own which the other two were as mutually innocent of as the babe
unborn. Eventually, however, both their eyes met and, as soon as
It began to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help
himself to the thing, he involuntarily determined to help him himself
and so he accordingly took hold of the mediumsized glass recipient
which contained the fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in

398

it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the same time however, a
considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the
beer that was in it about the place.

The debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome
of the course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity.
The debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they w’ere
engaged on the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne’s house
had never beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had
the old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so
encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there
at the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing
from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to
him was Lynch, whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early
depravity and premature wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place
assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid
repose the squat form of Madden. 1 he chair of the resident indeed
stood vacant before the hearth but on cither flank of it the figure of
Bannon in explorer’s kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues
contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners
of Malachi Roland St John Mulligan. Lastly at the head of the board
was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy
and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic
discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the
flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant
wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the
mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant
heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the
image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired pencil ot
Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come.

It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perv'erted
transcendentalism to which Mr S. Dedalus’ (Div. Seep.) contentions
would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter
to accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated,
deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in
the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and
explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some questions
which science cannot answer — at present — such as the first problem
submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future
determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of

399

r rinacria that the riglit ovary (the postmcnstrual period, as$ert others)
is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long neglected
spermatozoa or ncmasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as most
embryologists incline to opine, such as Cuipper, Spallanzani, Blumcn-
bach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both? This
would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature’s favourite
devices) between tlie nisus Jormativus of the nemasperm on the one
hand and on the other a happily chosen position, succubitut jelix, of
the passive element. 1 he other problem raised by the same inquirer
is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting because, as he
pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die
in different ways. Mr M. Mulligan (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the
sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract adenoidt,
pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk in
dust. These facts, he alleges, and the revolting spectacles offered by
our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of all
denominations, nmtilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic car-
drivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors
and untructified duennas — these, he said, were accountable for any
and every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he pro-
phesied, would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life,
genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instruc-
tive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as
Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all
these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular
condition to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner.
Mr J. Crotthers (Disc. Bacc.) attributes some of these demises to
abdominal trauma in the case of women workers subjected to heavy
labours in the workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by
far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in the
exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion or in
the atrocious crime of infanticide. Although the former (we are
thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he cites of
nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too
rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the
wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as
they do, all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings
which often balk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion
is that thrown out by Mr V. Lynch (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality

400

and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal
movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general,
everything, in fine, in nature’s vast workshop from the extinction of
some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers
which beautify our public parks, is subject to a law of numeration as
yet unascertained. Still the plain straightlorward question why a
child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and
properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood
(though other children of the same marriage do not) must certainly,
in the poet’s words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has
her own good and cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all
probability such deaths are due to some law of anticipation by which
organisms in which morbous germs have taken up their residence
(modern science has conclusively shown that only the plasmic sub-
stance can be said to be immortal) tend to disappear at an increasingly
earlier stage of development, an arrangement, which, though productive
of pain to some of our feelings (notably the maternal), is ncvcrthele«,
some of us think, in the long run beneficial to the race in general in
securing thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus (Diy.
Seep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omni-
vorous being which can masticate, dcglutc, digest and apparently pass
through the ordinary channel with plutcrpcrfea imperturbability such
multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition,
corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians
and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent
collation of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and in a
very unsavoury light the tendency above alluded to. For the enlighten-
ment of those who arc not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae
of the municipal abattoir as this morbidminded esthete and embryo
philosopher who for all his overweening bumptiousness in things
scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself
on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the idle
parlance of our lower class licensed victuallers signifies the cookable
and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a recent
public controversy w'ith Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which too
place in the commons’ hall of the National Maternity Hiwpital,
29, 30 and 31 Holies street, of which, as is well known. Dr A. Horne
(Lie. in Mdw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the able and popular master, he
is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman has

let the cat into the bag (an esthetic allusion, presumably, to one of
the most complicated and man'ellous of all nature’s processes, the act
of sexual congress) she must let it out again or give it life, as he phrased
it, to save her own. At the risk of her own was the telling rejoinder of
his interlocutor none the less effeetive for the moderate and measured
tone in wliich it w’as delivered.

.Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought
about a happy accouchement. It had been a w'cary w’cary while both
for patient and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and
the brave woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought
the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those who have
passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and
smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines
there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby
fingers (a pretty sight it is to sec), in the first bloom of her new mother-
hood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the
Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes
only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to
share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God’s clay, the fruit of
their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it)
and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a
grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of the
Ulster bank. College Green branch. Q Doady, loved one of old,
faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the
roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days.
God, how beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children
are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his,
Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy,
Budgy (Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling
little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African war,
lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of
their union, a Purefoy if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy
nose. Young hopeful will be christened Mortimer Edward after the
influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in the Treasury Remem-
brancer’s office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father
Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that
bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your
pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you
(may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in

402

the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low and so with a tranquil
heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time.
You too have fought the good fight and played loyally your man’s
part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful
servant!

There arc sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil
memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the
heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory
to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but
persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet
a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to
confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream,
or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver
tranquillity of the evening or at the feast at midnight when he is
now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as
over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from
the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent,
remote, reproachtul.

The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession
of that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some
studied trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker
an unhealthiness, a fiair^ for the cruder things of life. A scene dis-
engages itself in the observer’s memory, evoked, it would seem, by a
word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present
there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven
space of lawn one soft May evening, the wclircmembcrcd grove of
lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spcaators of
the game but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly
forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a
brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the water
moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant
sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know
not what of arresting in her pose then. Our Lady of the Cherries, a
comely brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign
warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of
four or five in linscywoolsey (blossomtimc but there will be cheer in
the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched)
is standing on the urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands.
He frowns a little just as this young man docs now with a perhaps too

403

conscious enjoyment of danger but must needs glance at whiles towards
where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving upon the flower-
close with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach {alles
itche) in her glad look.

Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter
that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note
their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude
of custody rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant
watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda
long ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy
with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly
distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending
above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub
and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres and with the
reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and
not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon
the utterance of the Word.

Burkes! Outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag
and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welshcr, piildoctor,
punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ash-
plants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and
what not. A dcdalc of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse
Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling
surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full
pound if a milligramme. They hark him on. The door! It is open?
Ha! They are out tumultuously, off for a minute’s race, all bravely
legging it, Burke’s of Den2illc and Holies their ulterior goal. Dixon
follows, giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he too,
and on. Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to
happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet.
Looks she too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne’s house
has told its tale in that washedout pallor. Them all being gone, a
glance of molherwit helping he whispers close in going: Madam,
when comes the storkbird for thee?

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence
wlestial, glistering on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum.
God s air, the Allfathcr’s air, scintillant circumambient cessile air.
Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast
done a doughty deed and no botchl Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest

404

progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous
chronicle. Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven pre-
formed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of
man’s work. Cleave to her! Serve! Toil on, labour like a very bandog
and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their
daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoUed with
butcher’s bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghousc?
Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of
ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby DuUman
there with his Joan.> A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all
their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod,
without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer. Copulation
without population! No, say I! Herod’s slaughter of the innocents
were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation!
Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium
of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayftvcr, bedsores,
ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks,
gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to thrtnes and trcntals
and Jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music. Twenty years
of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will
and would and wait and never do. Thou sawest thy America, thy
lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How
saith Zarathusthra.? Dfhf Kuh Trubsal melkest Du. Nun trinht
Du die susse Milch des Euters. Seel It displodes for thee in abundance.
Drink, man, an udderful! Mother’s milk, Purefoy, the milk of human
kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead, rutilant in thin
rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their
guzzlingden, milk of madness, the honcymilk of Canaan’s land. Thy
cow’s dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet arid
fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclabcr. To her, old

patriarch! Pap! Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est btbenduml

All off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafidw.
Where you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like
ole Billyo. Any brollies or gumboots in the fambly? Wh«e the
Henry Ncvil’s sawbones and ole do? Sorra one o me knows. Hurrah
there. Dixl Forward the ribbon counter. Where’s Punch? All serene.
Jay, look at the drunken minister coming out of the maternity bospdl
Benedicat vot omnipotent Deus, Pater et Filiut. A make, mister. 1 he
Dcnzille lane boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove cm

405

out of the bleeding limelight. Yous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion
in life. Lou heap good man. Alice samee this bunch. En avant, mes
enjants! Fire away number one on the gun. Burke’s! Thence they
advanced five parasangs. Slattery’s mounted foot where’s that bleeding
awfur? Parson Steve, apostates’ creed 1 No, no. Mulligan! Abaft
there! Shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock. Chuckingout time.
Mullee! What^s on you? Ma mere m'a mariee. British Beatitudes!
RatamplanDigidt Bourn Bourn. Ayes have it. To be printed and bound
at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf covers of
pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come
out of Ireland my time. SUentiuml Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed
to nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp
t^ramp the boys are (attitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles!
bulldogs, battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold
high. Beerbeef trample the biblcs. When for Irclandcar. Trample

Keep the durned millingtary step.
We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in.

No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly
sorry 1 ® ^

Query. Who s astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall.
Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltce. Not a red at
me this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the Vbermensch.
Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the
cabby s caudle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped
short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy?
Larambal Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular’s
got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful. Don’t mention it. Got a
pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Posfact. Got bet be a boomblebcc whenever
he was ^ttin sleepin m hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Buckled

k k Yup, sartin, I do. Full of a dure. See her in

her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey loveJcin. None of your
lean kme, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns.
Same here, ^ok slippery. If you fall don’t wait to get up. Five,
seven, nine. Fine! Got a prime pair of mincepics, no kid. And her
ukc me to rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed,
rour stanang eyes and dlbcplastercd neck you stole my heart, O
gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you’ll

w n T f I a gert vool.

Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity sagaciating O K?

How’s the st^uaws and papooses? Womanbody after going on the
straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There s hair. Ours the white
death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss. Mum-
mer’s wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified orchidised polycimical
Jesuit! Aunty mine’s writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Stephen lead
astray goodygood Malachi.

Hurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here,
Jock braw Hielcntman’s your barlcybrec. Lang may your lum reek
and your kailpot boil! My tipple. Merci. Here’s to us. How’s that?
Leg before wicket. Don’t stain my brandnew sitinems. Give’s a
shake of pepper, you there. Catch aholt. Caraway seed to carry
away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort.
Venus Pandemos. L^es petites jemmes. Bold bad girl from the town of
Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Sara by the wamc.
On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but
the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machrec, Macruiskeen.
Smutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull alltogether. £x.^

Waiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned
like seeing as how no shiners is acoming, Underconsiumble? He ve
got the chink ad lib. Seed near free poun on an a spell ago a said war
hisn. Us come right in on your invite, sec? Up to you, matey. Out
with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there
Frcnchy bilks? Won’t wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile vclly
solly. Ise dc cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawicy.
We arc nac fou. We’re nac tha fou. Au reservoir, Mossoo. Tanks

^ ’Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shcc you, shir.
Bantam, two days tcetec. Bowsing nowt but claretwinc. Garn! Have
a glint, do. Gum, I’m Jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too
full for words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he d
like? Rose of Castille. Rows of cast. Police! Some H.O for a gent
fainted. Look at Bantam’s flowers. Gemini, he’s going to holler.
The colleen bawn, my colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry
Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped
him a dead cert. The ruffin dy the nab of Stephen. Hand as give
me the iady coppalccn. He strike a tclegramboy paddock wire big
bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on
form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospel-
true. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him

407

in chokecchokec if the barman beck copped the game. Madden back
Madden’s a maddening back. O, lust, our refuge and our strength.
Decamping. Must you go.' Off to mammy. Stand by. Hide my
blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Comeahome, our Bantam.
Horry var, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel. Corn6dc
Wha gev yc thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of John Thomas, her
spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S’elp me, honest injun. Shiver my
timbers if I had. There’s a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me
tell, 'el, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha
mishinnah. Through yerd our lord, Amen.

'Vou move a motion? Steve boy, you’re going it some. More bluggy

drunkabies? Will immensely splendiferous standcr permit one stooder

of most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to termi-

nate one expensive inaugurated libation? Give’s a breather. Landlord,

landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, wee drap to pree

Cut and come again. Right Boniface! Absinthe the lot. Nos omm's

btbertmus vtridum toxteum diabolus capiat posteriora nostra. Closing-

time, gents. Eh? Rome boose for the Bloom toff. I hear you say

onions? BIoo? Cadges ads? Photo’s papli, by all that’s gorgeous!

Play lo\y, pardner. Slide. Bonsoir la compagnie. And snares of the

poxfiend. Where’s the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg

bail. Aweel ye maun e’en gang ycr gates. Checkmate. King to

tower. Kind Kristyann will yu help, yung man hoosc frend tuk

bungalo kee to find plais whear to lay crown off his hed 2 night.

Cnckcy, I m about sprung. Tarnally dog-gone my shins if this beent

the bestest puttiest longbrcakyct. Item, curate, couple of cookies

for this ^ild. Cot’s plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pile of

sheeses. Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed

spirity Time. Who wander through the world. Health all. A la
votrel

Golly, whatten tunket’s yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes.

I eep at his wearables. By mighty! What’s he got? Jubilee mutton.

’ y Janies. Wants it real bad. D’ye ken bare socks? Seedy
cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead
m his penis. Trumpery insanity. Battle the Bread we calls him.

I hat, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that
married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here sec lost
love. W lung Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in.
bcheduie imc. Nix for the hornies. Pardon? Sec him today at a

408

runcfal? Chum o yourn passed in his checks? Ludamassy! Pore
piccaninnies! Thou’Il no be telling me thot, Fold veg! Did urns
blubble bigsplash crytears cos frien Padney "as took otF in black bag?
Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never sec the like since
I was born. Tiens, tienf, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes. O get,
rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you
two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle
fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse tor him, says he, nor any
Rooshian. Time all. There’s eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward,
woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah, the Excellent One,
your soul this night ever tremendously conser\'e.

Your attention! We’re nae tha tou. The Leith police dismisseth
us. The least tholicc. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in
his abominable regions. Yooka. Night. .Mona, my thrue love.
Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.

Hark! Shut your obstropolos. Priaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There
she goes. Brigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up. Pflaap!
Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!

Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o me. Dcnzillc lane this way. Change
here for Bawdyhousc. We two, she said, will seek the kips where
shady Mary is. Righto, anv old time. Laetabuntur in cub'd'tbus tuis.
You coming long? Whisper, who the sooty hell s the johnny in the
black duds? Hush! Sinned against the light and even now that day
is at hand when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap!
JJt implerentur scripturae. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical
Dick to his comrade medical Davy. Christiclc, who s this excrement
yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall ? Elijah is coming. Washed in
the Blood of the Lamb. Come on, you winefizzling ginsizzling boose-
guzzling existences! Come on, you dog-gone, bullncckcd, beetle-
browed, hogjowlcd, peanutbrained, wcaselcycd fourflushers, false
alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy!
Alexander J. Christ Dowic, that’s yanked to glory most half this
planet from ’Frisco Beach to Vladivostok. The Deity ain t no nickel
dime bumshow. I put it to you that he’s on the square and a corking
fine business proposition. He’s the grandest thing yet and don t you
forget it. Shout salvation in king Jesus. You’ll need to rise precious
early, you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God.
Pflaaaap! Not half. He’s got a coughmixture with a punch in it for
you, my friend, in his backpocket. Just you try it on.

409

★ {The Mabbot street entrance of nighttown, bejore 'which stretches
an uncobbled tramsiding set with skeleton tracks^ red and green
•will-o -the~wisps and danger signals. Rows oj Jlimsy houses "with
gtsping doors. Rare lamps with jaint rainbow Jans. Round
Rabaiotti s halted ice gondola stunted men and women squabble.
They grab wajers between which are wedged lumps oj coal and
copper snow. Sucking, they scatter slowly. Children. The swan-
comb oj the gondola, highreared, jorges on through the murky white
and blue under a lighthouse. Whistles call and answer.')

THE CALL5
♦

Wait, my love, and I’ll be with you.

THE ANSWERS

Round behind the stable.

{A deajmute idiot with goggle eyes, his shapeless mouth dribbling,
jerks past, shaken in Saint Vitus' dance. A chain oj children's
hands imprisons him.)

THE CHILDREN

Kithoguel Salute.

THE IDIOT

{Lijts a palsied lejt arm and gurgles.) Grhahutel

THE CHILDREN

Where’s the great light.^

THE IDIOT

{Gobbing.) Ghaghahest.

{They release him. He jerks on. A pigmy woman swings on a
rope slung between the railings, counting. A^jorm sprawled against
a dustbin and muffied by its arm and hat moves, groans, grinding
growling teeth, and snores again. On a step a gnome totting among
a rubbishtip crouches to shoulder a sack oj rags and bones. A crone
standing by with a smoky oil lamp rams the last bottle in the maw
oj his sack. He heaves his booty, tugs askew his peaked cap and

410

hobbles 0/ mutely. The crone makes back for her lair sv^aying her
lamp. A bandy child, as^uat on the doorstep with a papershuttlecock,
crawls sidling after her in spurts, clutches her skirt, scrambles up.
A drunken navvy grips with both hands the railings oj an area,
lurching heavily. At a corner two night watch in shoulder capes,
their hands upon their sta^holsters, loom tall. A plate crashes^
a woman screams; a child wails. Oaths oj a man roar , mutter, cease.
Figures wander, lurk, peer Jrom warrens. In a room lit by a
candle stuck in a bottleneck a slut combs out the tatts jrom the
hair oj a scrojulous child. Cissy Cajjrey s voice, still young, sings
shrill jrom a lane.)

CISSY CAFFREY

I gave it to Molly
Because she was jolly,

The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.

{Private Carr and Private Compton, swaggersticks tight in their
oxters, as they march unsteadily rightaboutjace and burst together
jrom their mouths a volleyed jart. Laughter oj men jrom the lane.
A hoarse virago retorts.)

THE VIRAGO

Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.

CISSY CAFFREY

More luck to me. Cavan, Cootchill and Bclturbct. {She sings.)

I gave it to Nelly
To stick in her belly
The leg of the duck
The leg of the duck.

{ Private Carr and Private Compton turn and counterretort, their
tunics bloodbright in a lampglow, black sockets oj caps on their blond
copper polls. Stephen Dedalus and Lynch pass through the crowd

close to the redcoats.)

PRIVATE COMPTON

{Jerks his Jinger.) Way for the parson.

4 ”

PRIVATE CARR

(Turns and calls.) What ho, parson!

Cissy CAFFREY

{Her voice soaring higher.)

She has it, she got it,

Wherever she put it
The leg of the duck.

{Stephen, flourishing the ashplant in his left hand, chants with
joy the introit Jor paschal time. Lynch, his jockey cap low on his
brow, attends him, a sneer oj discontent wrinkling his jace>)

STEPHEN

Vidi aquam egredientem de templo a latere dextro. Alleluia.

{The Jami shed snaggle tusks oj an elderly bawd protrude jrom a
doorway.)

THE BAWD

{Her voice whispering huskily.) SstI Come here till I tell you.
Maidenhead inside. Sst.

STEPHEN

^It^uantulum.) Et omnts ad quos pervenit aqua ista.

THE BAWD

{Spits in their trail her jet oj venom.) Trinity medicals. Fallopian
tube. All prick and no pence.

(Ed'y Boardman, sniffling, crouched with Bertha Supple, draws
her shawl across her nostrils.)

EDY BOARDMAN

{Bickering.) And says the one; I seen you up Faithful place with
your squarepusher, the greaser off the raUway, in his cometobed hat.
Did you^, says I. That’s not for you to say, says L You never seen
me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of

412

her! Stag that one is. Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with
two fellows the one time, Kildbridc the enginedriver and lance-
corporal Oliphant.

STEPHEN

{Triumphaliter.) Salvi jacti i sunt.

{He flourishes his ashplant shivering the lamp image, shattering
light oven the 'world. A Itver and white spaniel on the prowl slinks
s^ter him, growling. Lynch scares it with a kick.)

LYNCH

So that?

STEPHEN

{Looks behind.) So that gesture, not music, not odours, would be a
universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay
sense but the first entclechy, the structural rhythm.

LYNCH

Pomosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburg strcetl

STEPHEN

Wc have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even
the allwiscst stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of
love.

LYNCH

Bal

STEPHEN

Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug? This
movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread and wine in Omar.
Hold my stick.

LYNCH

Damn your yellow stick. Where are wc going?

4*3

STEPHEN

Lecherous lynx, to la belle dame sans merci, Georgina Johnson, ad
deam qui laetijicat juventutem meam.

{Stephen thrusts the ashplant on him and slcrwly holds out his hands,
his head going back till both hands are a span from his breast, dov>n
turned in planes intersecting, the fingers about to part, the left
being higher.)

LYNCH

Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse.
Illustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.

{They pass. Tommy Carrey scrambles to a gaslamp and, clasping,
climbs in spasms. From the top spur he slides down, facky Caffrey
clasps to climb. The navvy lurches against the lamp. The twins
scuttle o£ in the dark. The navvy, swaying, presses a forefinger
against a wing of his nose and ejects from the farther nostril a long
liquid jet of snot. Shouldering the lamp he staggers away through
the crowd with his faring cresset.

Snakes of river fog creep slowly. From drains, clefts, cesspocls,
middens, arise on all sides stagnant fumes. A glow leaps in the south
beyond the seaward reaches of the river. The navvy staggering
forward cleaves the crowd and lurches towards the tramsiding.
On the farther side under the railway bridge Bloom appears flushed,
panting, cramming bread and chocolate into a side pocket. From
Gillen's hairdresser's window a composite portrait shows him gallant
Nelson's image. A concave mirror at the side presents to him
lovelorn longlost lugubru Booloohoom. Grave Gladstone sees him
level. Bloom for Bloom. He passes, struck by the stare of truculent
IF ellington but in the convex mirror grin unstruck the bonham eyes
and fatchuck cheekehops of follypoldy the rixdix doldy.

At Antonio Rabaiotti's door Bloom halts, sweated under the bright
arclamps. He disappears. In a moment he reappears and hurries
on.)

BLOOM

Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!

{He disappears into Olhousen's, the pork butcher's, under the down-
coming rollshutter. A few moments later he emerges from under the

4*4

shutter^ puffing Poldy, blowing Bloohoom. In each hand he holds
a parcel^ one containing a lukewarm pig's crubeen^ the other a cold
sheep's trotter, sprinkled with whotepepper. He gasps, standing
upright. Then bending to one side he presses a parcel against his
rib and groans.)

BLOOM

Stitch in my side. Why did I run?

{He takes breath with care and goes jorward slowly towards the
lampset siding. The glow leaps again.)

BLOOM

What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.

{He stands at Carmack's corner, watching.)

BLOOM

Aurora borealis or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course.
South side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar s bush.
We’re safe. {He hums cheerjullyT) London’s burning, London’s
burningl On fire, on fire! {He catches sight oj the navoy lurching
through the crowd at the Jarther side oj Talbot street.) 1 11 miss him.
Run. Quick. Better cross here.

{He darts to cross the road. Urchins shout.)

THE URCHINS

Mind out, mister!

{Two cyclists, with lighted paper lanterns aswing, swim by him,
grazing him, their bells rattling.)

THE BELLS

Haltyaltyaltyall.

BLOOM

{Halts erect stung by a spasm.) Ow.

4*5

looks round, darts Jorward suddenly. Through rising Jog a
dragon sandstrewer, travelling at caution, slews heavily down upon
him, its huge red headlight winking, its trolley hissing on the wire.
The motorman hangs his Jootgong.)

THE GONG

Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.

{The brake cracks violently. Bloom, raising a policeman' s whitegloved
hand, blunders stiffiegged, out oj the track. The motorman thrown
Jorward, pugnosed, on the guidewheel, yells as he slides past over
chains and keys.)

THE MOTORMAN

Hey, shitbrccchcs, arc you doing the hattrick?

BLOOM

{Bloom trickleaps to the curbstone and halts again. He brushes a
mudjlake Jrom his cheek with a parcelled hand^

No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must
take up Sandow’s exerciser again. On the hands down. Insure
against street accident too. The Providential. {He Jeels his trouser
pocket.) Poor mamma’s panacea. Heel easily catch in tracks or boot-
lace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe
at Leonard’s corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick. Insolent
driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might
be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same
style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True
word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something
poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark
of the beast. {He closes his eyes an instant.) Bit light in the head.
Monthly or effea of the other. Brainfogfag. That tired feeling.
Too much for me now. Ow!

{A sinister Jigure leans on plaited legs against O’Beirne's wall, a
visagk unknown, injected with dark mercury. From under a wide-
leaved sombrero the Jigure regards him with evil eye.)

416

BLOOM

Buenos noches, senorita Blanca, que calle es esta?

THE FIGORE

{Impassive, raises a signal arm.) Password. Sraid Mabbot.

BLOOM

Haha. Merd. Esperanto. Sian leash. {He mutters.) Gaelic league
spy, sent by that fireeater.

{He steps jorward. A sackshouldered ragman bars his path. He
steps lejt, ragsackman lejt.)

BLOOM

I beg.

{He swerves, sidles, stepsaside, slips past and on.)

BLOOM

Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a fingerpost planted by
the Touring Club at Stepasidc who procured that public boon? 1
who lost my way and contributed to the columns of the Irish Cyclist
the letter headed, In darkest Stepaside. Keep, keep, keep to the right.
Rags and bones, at midnight. A fence more likely. First place
murderer makes for. Wash off his sins of the world.

{Jacky Cafrey, hunted by Tommy Capey, runs jull tilt against
Bloom.)

BLOOM

oi

{Shocked, on weak hams, he halts. Tommy and Jacky vanish there,
there. Bloom pats with parcelled hands watch, jobpocket, bookpocket,
pursepocket, rweets oj sin, potato soap.)

BLOOM

Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves’ dodge. Collide. Then snatch
your purse.

417

2E

{TA( retriever approaches sniffling^ nose to the ground. A spravoted
jorm sneezes. A stooped bearded figure appears garbed in the long
cajtan oj an elder in Zion and a smoking cap with magenta tassels.
Horned spectacles hang down at the wings oJ the nose. Tellow poison
streaks are on the drawn jace.)

RUDOLPH

Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken
goy ever. So. You catch no money.

BLOOM

[Hides the crubeen and trotter behind his back and, crestjallen,jeels
warm and cold Jeetmeat.) ya, ich weiss, papachi.

RUDOLPH

What you making down this place? Have you no soul? [Withfieeble
vulture talons he jeels the silent jace oj Bloom.) Are you not my son
Leopold, the grandson of Leopold? Arc you not my dear son Leopold
who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham
and Jacob?

BLOOM

[H^ith precaution.) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that’s
left of him.

RUDOLPH

[Siverely.) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend
your good money. What you call them running chaps?

BLOOM

[In youth's smart blue Osjord suit with white vestslips, narrowshouldered,
in brown Alpine hat, wearing gent's sterling silver waterbury keyless
watch and double curb Albert with seal attached, one side oj him coated
with stifiening mud.) Harriers, father. Only that once.

RUDOLPH

Oncel Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They
make you kaput, Lcopoldleben. You watch them chaps.

418

BLOOM

{Weahiy.) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.

RUDOLPH

{With contempt.) Goim nachez. Nice spectacles for your poor moth^;r!

BLOOM

Mamma!

ELLEN BLOOM

(In pantomime dame's stringed mobcap, crinoline and bustle, widmc
Twankey's blouse -with muttonleg sleeves buttoned behind, grey mittens
and cameo brooch, her hair plaited in a crispine net, appears over the
staircase banisters, a slanted candlestick in her hand and cnes out
shrill alarm.) O blessed Rcdecnier, what have they done to him.
My smelling salts! (She hauls up a reej oj skirt and ransacks the pouch
of her striped blay petticoat. A phial, an Agnus Dei, a shrivelled potato
and a celluloid doll jail out.) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you

at all, at all?

(Bloom, mumbling, his eyes downcast, begins to bestow his parcels
in his filled pockets but desists, muttering.)

A VOICE

(Sharply.) Poldy!

BLOOM

Who? (He ducks and wards ofi a blow clumsily.) At your service.

(He looks up. Beside her mirage oj datepalms a handsome woman
in Turkish costume stands bejore him. Opulent

scarlet trousers and jacket slashed with gold. A wi e ye ow

bund girdles her. A white, yashmak violet tn the night, covers he
jace, leaving jree only her large dark eyes and raven hair.)

BLOOM

Mollyl

419

MARION

WcUy? Mrs Marion from this out, my dear man, when you speak
to me. {Satirically.) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?

BLOOM

{Shijts from foot to foot.) No, no. Not the least little bit.

{He breathes in deep agitation, swallowing gulps of air, questions,
hopes, crubeens for her supper, things to tell her, excuses, desire,
spellbound. A coin gleams on her forehead. On her feet are jewelled
toerings. Her ankles are linked by a slender fetterchain. Beside her
a camel, hooded with a turreting turban, waits. A silk ladder of
innumerable rungs climbs to his bobbing howdah. He ambles near
with disgruntled hindquarters. Fiercely she slaps his haunch, her
goldcurb wristbangles angriling, scolding him in Moorish.)

MARION

Ncbrakadal Feminimum.

{The camel, lifting a foreleg, plucks from a tree a large mango fruit,
ojfers it to his mistress, blinking, in his cloven hoof, then droops his
head and, grunting, with uplifted neck, fumbles to kneel. Bloom
stoops his back for leapfrog.)

BLOOM

I can give you. . . I mean as your business mcnagerer . . , Mrs Marion. . .
if you . , .

MARION

So you notice some change? {Her hands passing slowly over her
trtnketed stomacher. A slow friendly mockery in her eyes.) O Poldy,

Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud I Go and sec life. Sec the
wide world.

BLOOM

I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water
Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning.
{He pats divers pockets.) This moving kidney. Ahl

420

{He points to the souths then to the east. A cake oj new clean lemon
soap arises, Mousing light and perfume.)

THE SOAP

We’re a capital couple are Bloom and I;

He brightens the earth, I polish the sky.

{The freckled face of Sweny, the druggist, appears in the disc of the
soapsun.)

SWENT

Three and a penny, please.

BLOOM

Yes. For my wife, Mrs Marion. Special recipe.

MARION

{Softly.) Poldy!

BLOOM

Yes, ma’am?

MARION

TV trema un poco it cuorel

{In disdain she saunters away, plump as a pampered pouter pigeon,
humsmng the duet from Don Giovanni.)

BLOOM

Are you sure about that V oglioi I mean the pronunciati . . .

{He follows, followed by the sniffing terrier. The elderly bawd seizes
his sleeve, the bristles of her chinmole glittering.)

THE BAWD

Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched. Fifteen.
There’s no-one in it only her old father that’s dead drunk.

{She points. In the gap of her dark den furtive, rainbedraggled,
Bridie Kelly stands.)

421

BRIDIE

Hatch street. Any good in your mind?

{With a squeak she flaps her bat shaiol and runs. A burly rough
pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers,
plunges into gloom. IVeak squeaks oj laughter are heard, weaker.)

THE BAWD

{Her woljeyes shining.) He’s getting his pleasure. You won’t get a
virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don’t be all night before
the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.

{Leering, Gerty MacDowell limps jorward. She draws jrom
behind ogling, and shows coyly her bloodied clout.)

GERTY

With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. {She murmurs.) You
did that. I hate you.

BLOOM

I? When? You’re dreaming. I never saw you.

THE BAWD

Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat, Writing the gentleman false
letters. Strcetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take
the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.

GERTY

{To Bloom.) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer.
{She paws his sleeve, slobbering.) Dirty married man! I love you for
doing that to me.

{She slides away crookedly. Mrs Breen in man's Jrieze overcoat with
loose bellows pockets, stands in the causeway, her roguish eyes wide-
open, smiling in all her herbivorous buckteeth.)

MRS BREEN

Mr ...

422

BLOOM

{Coughs gravely.) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter
dated the sixteenth instant . . .

MRS BREEN

Mr Bloom! You down here in the haunts of sinl I caught you
nicely 1 Scampi

BLOOM

{Hurriedly.) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think me ?
Don’t give me away. Walls have hears. How do you do? It’s ages
since I. You’re looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather
we arc having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home
here. Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women Magdalen asylum.
I am the secretary . . .

MRS BREEN

{Holds up a Jinger.) Now don’t tell a big fib! I know somebody
won’t like that. O just wait till I see Molly! {Slily.) Account for
yourself this very minute or woe betide you!

BLOOM

{Looks behind.) She often said she’d like to visit. Slumming. The
exotic, you see. Negro servants too in livery if she had money.
Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and corner-
man at the Livermore Christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that

matter.

{Tom and Sam Bohee, coloured coons in v/hite duck suits, scarlet
socks, upstarched Sambo chokers and large scarlet asters in their
buttonholes leap out. Each has his banjo slung. Their paler smaller
negroid hands jingle the twing-t^eang wires. Flashing white Kaffir
eyes and tusks they rattle through a breakdown in clumsy clogs,
twinging, singing, back to back, toe heel, heel toe, with smackjat-
clacking nigger lips.)

There’s someone in the house with Dina
There’s someone in the house, 1 know,

There’s someone in the house with Dina
Pla)dng on the old banjo.

423

{They whisk black masks Jrom raw babby Jaces: then, chuckling,
chortling, tramming, twanging they diddle diddle cakewalk dance
away.')

BLOOM

(With a sour tenderish smile.) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so
inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a
fraction of a second?

MRS BREEN

(Screams gaily.) O, you ruck! You ought to sec yourself!

BLOOM

For old sake’sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage
mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft
corner for you. (Gloomily.) ’Twas I sent you that valentine of the
dear gazelle.

MRS BREEN

Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (She puts
out her hand inquisitively.) What are you hiding behind your back?
Tell us, there’s a dear.

BLOOM

(Seizes her wrist with his jree hand.) Josie Powell that was, prettiest
deb in Dublin. How time flics by! Do you remember, harking back
in a retrospective arrangement. Old Christmas night Georgina
Simpson’s housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop
game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what
is in this snulfbox ?

MRS BREEN

You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and
you looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.

BLOOM

(Squire of dames, in dinner jacket, with wateredsUk facings, blue masonic
badge in his buttonhole, black bow and mother-of-pearl studs, a prismatic
champagne glass tilted in his hand.) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you
Ireland, home and beauty.

424

MRS BREEN

The dear dead days beyond recall. Love’s old sweet song.

BLOOM

{Meaningiully dropping hh voice.) I confess I’m teapot with curiosity
to find out whether some person’s something is a little teapot at

present.

MRS BREEN

(Gushingly.) Tremendously teapot! London’s teapot and I’m simply
teapot all over me. {She rubs sides 'with htm.) After the parlour mystery
games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman.
Under the mistletoe. Two is company.

BLOOM

{fV earing a purple Napoleon hat with an amber haljmoon, his fingers
and thumbs passing slowly derwn to her sojt moist meaty palm which she
surrenders gently.) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter
out of this hand, carefully, slowly. {Tenderly, as he slips on her finger
a ruby ring^) Lu ci dartm la mano^

MRS BREEN

{In a onepiece evening jrock executed in moonlight blue, a tinsel sylph's
diadem on her brow with her dancecard jalten beside her moonblue satin
slipper, curves her palm softly, breathing quickly.) Voglio e non. You’re
hot! You’re scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.

BLOOM

When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the
beast. I can never forgive you for that. {His clenched fist at his brow.)

Think what it means. All you meant to me then. {Hoarsely.)
Woman, it’s breaking me!

{Dennis Breen, whitetallhatted, with Wisdom Hely s sandwichboard,
shuffles past them in carpet slippers, his dull beard thrust out,
i„g to right and left. Little Alj Bergan, cloaked in the pall of the
ace of spades, dogs him to left and right, doubled in laughter.)

425

ALF BERGAN

{Points jeering at the sandwich boards.) U. p.: Up.

MRS BREEN

{To Bloom.) High jinks below stairs. {She gives him the glad eye.)
V\ hy didn’t you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.

BLOOM

{Shocked.) Molly’s best friend! Could you?

MRS BREEN

{Her pulpy tongue between her lips, ofers a pigeon kiss.) Hnhn. The
answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?

BLOOM

{Ofhandedly.) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without
potted meat is incomplete. I was at Leah. Mrs Bandman Palmer.
1 renchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the
programme. Rattling good place round there for pig’s feet. Feel.

{Richie Goulding, three ladies* hats pinned on his heady appears
weighted to one side by the black legal bag oj Collis and fFard on
which a skull and crossbones are painted in white limewash. He
opens it and shows it jull oJ polonies, kippered herrings, Findon
baddies and tightpacked pills.)

RICHIE

Best value in Dub.

{Bald Pat, bothered beetle, stands on the curbstone, Jolding his
napkin, waiting to wait.)

PAT

{Advances with a tilted dish oJ spillspilling gravyi) Steak and kidney.
Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.

RICHIE

Goodgod. Inev erate inall . . .

426

{With hanging head he marches do^edly forward. The nawy,
lurching by., gores him with his flaming pronghorn.')

RICHIE

{With a cry of pain, his hand to his back.) Ah! Bright’s! Lights!

BLOOM

{Points to the navvy.) A spy. Don’t attract attention. I hate stupid
crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.

MRS BREEN

Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull
story.

BLOOM

I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here. But
you must never tell. Not even Molly. I have a most particular
reason.

MRS BREEN

{All agog.) O, not for worlds.

Let’s walk on. Shall us?

BLOOM

MRS BREEN

Let’s.

{The bawd makes an unheeded sign. Bloom walks on with Mrs
Breen. The terrier follows, whining piteously, wagging his tail.)

THE BAWD

jewman’s melt!

BLOOM

{In an oatmeal sporting suit, a sprig of woodbine in the lapel, tony bufl
shirt, shephertPs plaid Saint Andrew's cross scarf tie, white spats, fawn
dustcoat on his arm, tawny red brogues, fleldglasses in bandolier and a

427

grey billycock hal.) Do you remember a long long time, years and
years ago, just after Milly, Marionette we called her, was weaned when
\\c all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?

MRS BREEN

{In smart Saxe tailormatJe, white velours hat and spider veil.) Leopards-
town.

BLOOM

I mean, Lcopardstown. And Molly won seven shillings on a three
year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that
old fivescater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday
then and you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of
molcfur that Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked
down to nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen,
and I’ll lay you what you like she did it on purpose . . .

MRS BREEN

She did, of course, the cat! Don’t tell me! Nice adviser!

BLOOM

Because it didn’t suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little
tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on
you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a
pity to kill it, you cruel creature, little mite of a thing with a heart
the size of a fullstop.

MRS BREEN

{Squeezes his arm, simpers.) Naughty cruel I was.

BLOOM

{Low, secretly, ever more rapidly.) And Molly was eating a sandwich
of spiced beef out of Mrs Joe Gallaher’s lunch basket. Frankly,
though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her
style. She was . . .

MRS BREEN

Too

• » •

428

BLOOM

Yes. And Molly was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O’Reilly
were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius
Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter,
Dancer Moses was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up
and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across . . .

MRS BREEN

{Eagerly.) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

{She Jades Jrom his side. Followed by the whining dog he walks
on towards hellsgates. In an archway a standing woman, bent
forward, her feet apart, pisses cowily. Outside a shuttered pub a
bunch of loiterers listen to a tale which their brokensnouted ga^er
rasps out with raucous humour. An armless pair of them flop wrest-
ling, growling, in maimed sodden playjight.)

THE GAFFER

{Crouches, his voice twisted in his snout.) And when Cairns came
down from the scaffolding in Beaver Street what was he after doing
it into only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the
shavings for Derwan’s plasterers.

THE LOITERERS

{Gu£aw with cleft palates.) O jays!

{Their paintspeckled hats wag. Spattered with size and lime if
their lodges they frisk limblessly about him.)

BLOOM

Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad
daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.

THE LOITERERS

that’s a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men s porter.

{Bloom passes. Cheap whores, singly, coupled, shawled, dishevelled,
call from lanes, doors, corners.)

429

THE WHORES

Arc you going far, Queer fellow?

How's your middle leg?

Got a match on you?

Eh, come here till I stiffen it for you.

{He pledges through their sump towards the lighted street beyond.
From a bulge oj window curtains a gramophone rears a battered
brazen trunk. In the shadow a shebeenkeeper haggles with the
navvy and the two redcoats.)

THE NAVVY

{Belching.) Where’s the bloody house ?

THE SHEBEENKEEPER

Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.

THE NAVVY

{Gripping the two redcoats^ staggers forward with them.) Come on,
you British army!

PRIVATE CARR

{Behind his back.) He aint half balmy.

PRIVATE COMPTON

{Laughs.) What ho! .

PRIVATE CARR

{To the navvy.) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr.
Just Carr.

THE NAVVY

{Shouts.)

We are the boys. Of Wexford.

PRIVATE COMPTON

Sayl What price the sergeantmajor?

+30

PRIVATE CARR

Bennett? He’s my pal. I love old Bennett.

{Shouts.)

THE NAVVY

The galling chain.

And free our native land

{He staggers jorwardy dragging them -with him. Bloom stops, at
jault. The dog approaches, his tongue outloUing, panting.)

BLOOM

Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they
are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. ^ene
at Westland row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then
too far. Train with engine behind. Might have taken me to Mala-
hide or a siding for the night or collision. Second drink does it. Once

is a dose. What am I following him for ? Still, he’s the best of that lot.

If I hadn’t heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn t have gone
and wouldn’t have met. Kismet. He’ll lose that cash. Relieving office
here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs. What do ye lack? Soon got,
soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that mangong^^'heel-
iracklroUeyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind. Can t always
save you, ihough. If I had passed Truelock’s window that day two
minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still ^ bullet
only went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred
pounds. What was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his game-
keeper.

{He gaxes ahead reading on the wall a scrawled chalk legend
Wet Dream and a phallic design.)

Oddi Molly drawing on the frosted carriagcpanc at Kingstown.
What’s that like? {Gaudy dollwomen loll in the lighted doopvps, in
window embrasures, smoking Birdseye cigarettes. The odour oj the sick-
sweet weed floats towards him in slow round availing wreaths.)

THE WREATHS

Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.

431

BLOOM

My spine’s a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get
all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpcncc
too much. {The retriever drives a cold snivelling muzzle against his
hand, -wagging his tail.) Strange how they take to me. Even that
brute today. Better speak to him 6rst. Like women they like
rencontres. Stinks like a polecat. Chacun son gout. He might be mad.
Fido. Uncertain in his movements. Good fellow! Garryowen!
(The -woljdog sprawls on his hack, wriggling obscenely with begging paws,
his long black tongue lolling out.) Influence of his surroundings. Give
and have done with it. Provided nobody. {Calling encouraging
words he shambles back wtth a Jurtive poacher's tread, dogged by the
setter into a dark stalestunk corner. He unrolls one parcel and goes to
dump the crubeen sojtly but holds back and jeels the trotter.) Sizeable for
threepence. But then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort.
Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.

{With regret he lets unrolled crubeen and trotter slide. The mastif
mauls the bundle clumsily and gluts himselj with growling greed,
crunching the bones. Two raincaped watch approach, silent, vigilant.
They murmur together.)

THE WATCH

Bloom. Of Bloom. For Bloom. Bloom.

{Each lays hand on Bloom's shoulder.)

FIRST WATCH

Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.

BLOOM

{Stammers.) I am doing good to others.

{A covey oj gulls, storm petrels, rises hungrily jrom Uffey slime
with Banbury cakes in their beaks.)

THE GDLLS

432

Kaw kavc kankury kake.

BLOOM

The friend of man. Trained by kindness.

{He points. Bob Doran, toppling jrom a high barstool, sways over the
munching spaniel.)

BOB DORAN

Towscr. Give us the paw. Give the paw.

{The bulldog growls, his scrujff standing, a gobbet oj ptg s knuckle
between his molars through which rabid scumspittle dribbles.
Bob Doran jails silently into an area.)

SECOND WATCH

Prevention of cruelty to animals.

BLOOM

{Enthusiastically.) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on
Harold’s cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab.
Bad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last
tram. All tales of circus life arc highly demoralising.

{Signor Mages, passion pale, in liontamer's costume with diamond
studs in his shirtfront steps jorward, holding a circus paper hoop,
a curling carriagewhip and a revolver with which he covers the

gorging boarhound.)

SIGNOR MAFFEJ

{With a sinister smile.) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated grey-
hound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent
spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted
thong. Block tackle and a strangling puUy will bring your lion to
heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo jerox there, ^e Libyan
mancatcr. A redhot crowbar and some limment rubbing on the
burning part produced Friu of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena.
{He glares.) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it
with these brcastsparklcrs. {With a bewitching smile.) I now introduce
Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.

433

FIRST WATCH

Come. Name and address.

BLOOM

I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! {He takes of his high
grade hat, saluting.) Dr Bloom, Leopold, dental surgeon. You have
heard of von Bloom Pasha. Umpteen millions. Donnerwetter! Owns
half Austria. Egypt. Cousin.

FIRST WATCH

Proof.

{A card Jails from inside the leather headband oj Bloom's hat.)

BLOOM

{In red Jez, cadi's dress coat with broad green sash, wearing a Jalse
badge oj the Legion oJ Honour, picks up the card hastily and ofers
it.) Allow me. My club is the junior Army and Navy. Solicitors:
Messrs John Henry Menton, 27 Bachelor’s Walk.

FIRST WATCH

{Reads.) Henry Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and
besetting.

SECOND WATCH

An alibi. You arc cautioned.

BLOOM

{Produces from his heartpocket a crumpled yellow Jlower.) This is
the flower in question. It was given me by a man I don’t know his
name. {Plausibly.) You know that old joke, rose of Castillc. Bloom.
The change of name Virag. {He murmurs privately and conjidentially.)
We are engaged you see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entangle-
ment. {He shoulders the second watch gently.) Dash it all. It’s a way
we gallants have in the navy. Uniform that does it. {He turns gravely
to the Jirst watch.) Still, of course, you do get your Waterloo some-
times. Drop in some evening and have a glass of old Burgundy.

434

{^o the second ’watch gaily.') I’ll introduce you, inspector. She s game.
Do it in shake of a lamb’s tail.

{A dark mercurialised jace appears, leading a idled Jigure.)

THE DARK MERCURY

The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.

MARTHA

{Thick’veiled, a crimson halter round her neck, a copy oj the Irish Times
in her hand,in tone oj reproach, pointing.) Henry! Leopold! Leopold!
Lionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.

FIRST WATCH

(Sternly.) Come to the station.

BLOOM

(Scared, hats himselj, steps back, then, plucking at hts heart and lijting
his right jorearm on the square, he gives the sign and dueguard oj
JcllowcraJt.) No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken
identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubose. You remember
the Childs fratricide case. VVe medical men. By striking him dead
with a hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty escape
than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.

MARTHA

(Sobbing behind her veil.) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy
Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I’ll tell my brother,
the Bectivc rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.

BLOOM

(Behind his hand.) She’s drunk. The woman is inebriated. (He
murmurs vaguely the past oj Ephraim.) Shitbrolecth.

SECOND WATCH

(Tears in his eyes, to Bloom.) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed
of yourself.

435

BLOOM

Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure marc's nest. I am
a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respect*
able married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles
street. My wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished com-
mander, a gallant upstanding gentleman, who do you call him,
Majorgencral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain’s fighting men who helped
to win our battles. Got his majority for the heroic defence of Rorke’s
Drift.

Regiment.

FIRST WATCH

BLOOM

{Turns to the gallery.) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the earth,
known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up
there among you. The R. D. F. With our own Metropolitan police,
guardians of our homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men,
as physique, in the service of our sovereign.

A VOICE

Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain?

BLOOM

{His hand on the shoulder oj the first 'watch.) My old dad too was a
J. P. Tm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the
colours for king and country in the absentminded war under general
Gough in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein,
was mentioned in dispatches. I did all a white man could. {With
quiet jeeling.) Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank.

FIRST WATCH

Profession or trade.

BLOOM

Well, I follow a literary occupation. Author-journalist. In fact wc
arc just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the
inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected
with the British and Irish press. If you ring up . . .

436

{Myles CrawJorJ strides out jerkily^ a quill between his teeth, hts
scarlet beak blazes within the aureole of his straw hat. He dangles
a hank of Spanish onions in one hand and holds with the other hand
a telephone receiver nozzle to his ear.)

MYLES CRAWFORD

(His cock's wattles wagging.) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello.
Freeman's Urinal and Weekly Arsewiper here. Paralyse Europe. You
which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom?

{Mr Philip Beaufoy^palefacedy stands in the witnessboXy in accurate
morning dress, outbreast pocket with peak of handkerchief showing,
creased lavender trousers and patent boots. He carries a large port-
folio labelled Matcham’s Masterstrokes.)

BEAUFOY

{Drawls.) No, you aren’t, not by a long shot if I know it. I don’t
sec it, that’s all. No born gentleman, no one with the most rudimentary
promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome
conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak
masquerading as a litcrateur. It’s perfectly obvious that with the most
inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling books, really
gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which arc beneath
suspicion. The Bcaufoy books of love and great possessions with which
your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout
the kingdom.

BLOOM

{Murmurs with hangdog meekness.) That bit about the laughing witch
hand in hand I take exception to, if I may . . .

BEAUFOY

{His lip upcurledy smiles superciliously on the court.) You funny ass,
you I You’re too beastly awfully weird for words! I don’t think you
need over excessively disincommodatc yourself in that regard. My
literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord,
we shall receive the usual witnesses fees, shan t we? We arc con-
siderably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw
of Rheims, who has not even been to a university.

437

BLOOM

{Indistinctty.) University of life. Bad art.

BEAUFOY

{Shouts.') It s a damnably foul lie showing the moral rottenness of the
man I {He extends his portjolio.) We have here damning evidence,
the corpus delicti^ my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured
by the hallmark of the beast.

A VOICE FROM THE GALLERY

Moses, Moses, king of the jews,

Wiped his arse in the Daily News.

BLOOM

{Bravely.) Overdrawn.

BEAUFOY

You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotterl
{To the court.) Why, look at the man’s private lifcl Leading a quad-
ruple existence! Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned
in mixed society. The arch conspirator of the age.

BLOOM

{To the court.) And he, a bachelor, how . . .

FIRST WATCH

The King versus Bloom. Call the woman Driscoll.

THE CRIER

Mary Driscoll, scullcrymaid!

{Mary Driscoll^ a slipshod servant ^>/, approaches. She has a
bucket on the crook oj her arm and a scouringbrush in her hand.)

SECOND WATCH

Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?

438

MARY DRISCOLL

{Indignantly.) I’m not a bad one. I bear a respectable character
and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six pounds
a year and my chances with Fridays out, and I had to leave owing to his
carryings on.

FIRST WATCH

What do you tax him with?

MARY DRISCOLL

He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor
as I am.

BLOOM

{In housejacket oj ripplecloth, Jlannel trousers, heelless slippers, unshaven,
his hair rumpled sojtly.) 1 treated you white. I gave you mementos,
smart emerald garters lar above your station. Incautiously I took
your part when you were accused of pilfering. 1 here’s a medium in
all things. Play cricket.

MARY DRISCOLL

{Excitedly.) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid
a hand to them oysters!

FIRST WATCH

The offence complained of? Did something happen?

MARY DRISCOLL

He surprised me in the rerc of the premises, your honour, when the
missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety
pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a result.
And he interfered twict with my clothing.

She counterassaulted.

BLOOM

MARY DRISCOLL

{Scornjully.) I had more rc.spcct for the scouringbrush, so I had.
I remonstrated with him, your lord, and he remarked: Keep it quiet!

{General laughter.)

439

GEORGES FOTTRELL

[Clerk oj the crown and peace^ resonantly.') Order in court! The
accused will now make a bogus statement.

[Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a Jullhlown ' waterlily,
begins a long unintelligible speech. They would hear what counsel
had to say in his stirring address to the grandjury. He was down and
out but, though branded as a black sheep, ij he might say so, he meant
to rejorm, to retrieve the memory oj the past in a purely sisterly way
and return to nature as a purely domestic animal. A seven months'
child, he had been carejully brought up and nurtured by an aged
bedridden parent. There might have been lapses oj an erring jather
but he wanted to turn over a new leaj and now, when at long last
in sight oj the whipping post, to lead a homely lije in the evening oj
his days, permeated by the a^ectionate surroundings oj the heaving
bosom oj the jamily. An acclimatised Britisher, he had seen that
summer eve jrom the jootplate oj an engine cab oj the Loop line
railway company while the rain rejrained jrom jailing glimpses,
as It were, through the windows oj lovejul households in Dublin
city and urban district oj scenes truly rural oj happiness oj the
better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen,
innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred Injant,
youthjul scholars grappling with their pensums, model young ladies
ploying on the pianojorte or anon all with jervour reciting the
jamily rosary round the crackling Tulelog while in the boreens and
green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the
strains oj the organtoned melodeon Britannia metalbound with
jour acting stops and twelvejold bellows, a sacrijice, greatest
bargain ever . . .)

[Renewed laughter. He mumbles incoherently. Reporters complain
that they cannot hear.)

LONGHAND AND SHORTHAND

[Without looking up jrom their notebooks.) Loosen his boots. ‘

PROFESSOR MACHUGH
[From the presstable, coughs and calls.)

Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits.

440

{The crossexamination proceeds re Bloom and the bucket. A large
bucket. Bloom himi.lj. Bouel trouble. In Beaver street. Gripe. yes.
Quite bad. A plasterer s bucket. By -walking sttjflegged. Sneered
untold misery. Deadly agony. About noon. Love or burgundy. 7 es,
some spinach. Crucial moment. He did not look in the bucket.
Nobody. Rather a mess. Not completely. A TiX.h\x^ back number.)
{Uproar and catcalls. Bloomy in a torn jrockcoat stained with
white-washy dinged silk hat sideways on his head, a strip oj sticking-
plaster across his nose, talks inaudibly.)

j. j. o’molloy

{In barrister's grey wig and stujfgown, speaking with a voice oj pained
protest.) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring
mortal disguised in liquor. e are not in a beargarden nor at an
Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. .My client is an infant,
a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now
trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was
due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucina-
tion, such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence being quite
permitted in nty client’s native place, the land of the Pharaoh. Prima
jade, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing.
Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of by Driscoll,
that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I would deal in
especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck and
somnambulism in my client’s family. If the accused could speak he
could a talc unfold one of the strangest that have ever been narrated
between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical
wreck from cobbler’s weak chest. His submission is that he is of
Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there,

in fact.

BLOOM

{Barejooty pigeonbreasted, in lascars vest and trousers, apologetic toes
turned in, opens his tiny mole's eyes and looks about him dazedly^ passing
a slow hand across his jore head. Then he hitches his belt sailor jashion
and with a shrug oj oriental obeisance salutes the court, pointing one
thumb heavenward.) Him niakce vclly muchcc fine night. {He begins

to lilt simply.)

441

Li li poo lil chile,

Blingee pigfoot evly night.

Payee two shilly . . .

{He is h<ru:led down.)

J. J. o’molloy

{Hotly to the populace.) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will
not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion
by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has super-
seded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically without
wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused was not
accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered with.
The young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very
own daughter. {Bloom takes y, y. 0 'M.oltoy's hand and raises it to his
lips.) I shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the
hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute
Bloom. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man
in the world to do anything ungcntlemanly which injured modesty
could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning
when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his
own sweet will on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the
whitest man I know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the
mortgaging of his extensive property at Agcndath Nctaim in faraway
Asia Minor, slides of w'hich will now be shown. {To Bloom.) I suggest

that you will do the handsome thing.

BLOOM

A penny in the pound.

{The mirage oj the lake oj Kinnereth with blurred cattle cropping
in silver haxe is projected on the wall. Moses Ltlugacz^ Jerreteyed
albino, in blue dungarees, stands up in the gallery, holding in each
hand an orange citron and a pork kidney.)

DLUOACZ

{Hoarsely.) Blcibtrcustrasse, Berlin, W. 13.

(j^- O Molloy steps on to a low plinth and holds the lapel oJ his
coat with solemnity. His j ace lengthens, grows pale and bearded,

442

■with sunken eyes, the blotches oj phthisis and hectic cheekbones of
John F. Taylor. He applies his handkerchiej to his mouth and
scrutinises the galloping tide oJ rosepink blood.)

). j. o’molloy

{Almost voicelessly.) Excuse me, 1 am suffering frotn a severe chill,
have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchoscn words. {He
assumes the ovine head, joxy moustache and proboscidal eloquence J
Seymour Bushe.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught
that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigurcd and ot
soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar
the sacred benefit of the doubt. {A paper 'with something written on
it is handed into court.)

BLOOM

{In court dress.) Can give best references. .Messrs Callan, Coleman.
Mr Wisdom Hcly J. P. My old chief Joe Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon,
ex-lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the
highest. . . Queens of Dublin Society. {Carelessly.) I was just
chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert
and lady Ball, astronomer royal, at the levee. Sir Bob, I said . . .

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

{In Itnccorsaged opal balldress and elbowlength ivory gloves, wearing
a sabletrimmed brick quilted dolman, a comb oj brilliants and panache of
osprey in her hair.) Arrest him constable. He wrote me an anonymous
letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding
of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovcbirch. He
said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box
of the Theatre Royal at a command performance of La Cigale. I deeply
inflamed him, he said. He made improper overtures to me to mis-
conduct myself at half past four p.m. on the following 1 hursday,
Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the post a work of
fiction by Monsieur Paul dc Kock, entitled The Girl with the Three

Pairs oj Stays.

MRS BELLINGHAM

{In cap and seal coney mantle, wrapped up to the nose, steps out oj
her brougham and scans through tortoiseshell quizzing-glasses which

443

ihc tokci Jrom insulc her huge opossum mu^.) Also to me. Yes, I believe
if is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage
door outside sir I hornley Stoker’s one sleety day during the cold
snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe
and ballstop iti my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed
.1 bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour.
I had It examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information
that it was a blossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined from a
forcingcase of the model farm.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

Shame on him!

{A crowd oj sluts and ragamuffins surges Jorward.)

THE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS

{Screaming.) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for
Ikey Mo!

SECOND WATCH

{Produces handcuffis.) Here are the darbies.

MRS BELLINGHAM

He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments
as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound
coachman Balmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as
envious of his carflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate
proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my
livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon gar-
nished sable, a buck’s head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly
my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to
the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in price-
less lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged me, stating
that he felt it his mission in life to urge me, to deflle the marriage bed,
to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

{In amazon costume^ hard hat^ jackboots cockspurredf vermilion waistcoat^
jawn musketeer gauntlets with braided drums, long train held up and

hunting crop icith ‘which she strikes her uelt constantly.) Also me.
Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Pheenix park at the
match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know,
shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inni-
skillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob Centaur. This
plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent
me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold
after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still.
It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife as he
solemnly assured me, taker, by him from nature), practising illicit
intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He
urged me to do likew'ise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the
garrison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner,
to chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give
him a most vicious horscwhippii^g.

MRS BELLINGHAM

Me too.

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

Me too.

{Several highly respectable Dublin ladies hold up improper letters
received jrom Bloom.)

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

{Stamps her jingling spurs in a sudden paroxysm oj sudden Jury.) I will,
by the God above me. I’ll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as
I can stand over him. I’ll flay him alive.

BLOOM

{His eyes closing, quails expectantly.) Here? {He squirms.) Again!
{He pants cringing.) I love the danger.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

Very much so! TI! make it hot for you. I’ll make you dance Jack
Latten for that.

445

MRS BELLINGHAM

Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

Disgraceful! There’s no excuse for him! A married man!

BLOOM

All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling
glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

[Laughs derisively,) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living
God, you’ll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most
unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the
dormant tigress in my nature into fury.

MRS BELLINGHAM

[Shakes her mu^ and quizzing-glasses vindictively.) Make him smart,
Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch
of his life. The cat-o ’-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.

BLOOM

[Shuddering, shrinking, joins his hands with hangdog mien.) O cold!
O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet.
Let me off this once, [Re ofers the other cheek.)

MRS YELVERTON BARRY

(^everely.) Don’t do so on any account, Mrs Talboysl He should
DC soundly trounced!

THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS

[Unbuttoning her gauntlet violently.) I’ll do no such thing. Pig dog
and always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me!
1 11 flog him black and blue in the pubUc streets. I’U dig my spurs
m him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold, swishes

her huntingcrop savagely in the air.) Take down his trousers without
loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?

BLOOM

{Tremhlingy beginning to obey.) The weather has been so warm.
{Davy Stephensy ringletedy passes 'with a bevy oj barejoot newsboys.)

DAVY STEPHENS

Messenger oJ the Sacred Heart and Evening Telegraph with Saint
Patrick's Day Supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the
cuckolds in Dublin.

{^he very reverend Canon O' Hanlon in cloth oj gold cope elevates
and exposes a marble timepiece. Bejore him Father Conroy and
the reverend john Hughes S. j. bend low.)

THE TIMEPIECE

{Vnportalling.)

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

Cuckoo.

{The brass quoits of a bed are heard to jingle.)

THE QUOITS

J'gjag. Jigajiga- J'ai^g-

{A panel oj jog rolls back rapidlyy revealing rapidly in the jurybox
the j aces oj Martin Cunninghamyjoreman silkhattedy jack Power y
Simon Dedalusy Tom Kernan, Ned Lamberty John Henry Menton,
Myles Crawjordy Lenehany Paddy Leonard y Nosey Flynny M'Coy
and the jeatureless jace oj a Nameless One.)

THE NAMELESS ONE

Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.

THE JURORS

(All their heads turned to his voice.) Really?

447

THE NAMELESS ONE

{'intirls.) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.

THE JURORS

(^// their heads lowered in assent.) Most of us thought as much.

FIRST WATCH

He is a marked man. Another girl’s plait cut. Wanted: Jack the
Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.

SECOND WATCH

{Awed, whispers.) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.

THE CRIER

{Loudly.) Whereas Leopold Bloom of no fixed abode is a wellknown
dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance
to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes
the most honourable . . .

{His Honour, sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder oj Dublin, in judicial
garb oj grey stone rises jrom the bench, stonebearded. He bears
in his arms an umbrella sceptre. From his jorehead arise starkly
the Mosaic ramshorns.)

THE RECORDER

I will put an end to this while slave traffic and rid Dublin of this
odious pest. Scandalous! {He dons the black cap.) Let him be taken,
Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in
custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty’s pleasure and there
be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your
peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him.
{A black skullcap descends upon his head.)

{The subsherif Long John Fanning appears, smoking a pungent
Henry Clay.)

LONG JOHN FANNING

{Scowls and calls with rich rolling utterance.) Who’ll hane Tudas
Iscariot? ®

{H. "Rumboldy master barber^ in a bloodcoloured jerkin and tanner’s
apron^ a rope coiled over his shoulder, mounts the block. A Uje
preserver and a nailstudded bludgeon are stuck in his belt. He
rubs grimly his grappling hands, knobbed with knuckledusters.^

RUMBOLD

{To the recorder with sinister jamiliarity.) Hanging Harry, your
Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.
{The bells oj George’s church toll slowly, loud dark iron.)

Heigho! Heigho!

THE BELLS

BLOOM

{Desperately.) Wail. Slop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.
Girl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzees. {Breathlessly.)
Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. {(^ercome with
emotion.) I left the precincts. {He turns to a figure in the crowd,
appealing.) Hynes, may I speak to you? You know me. That three
shillings you can keep. If you want a little more . . .

HYNES

{Coldly.) You are a perfect stranger.

SECOND WATCH

{Points to the corner.) The bomb is here.

FIRST WATCH

Infernal machine with a time fuse.

BLOOM

No, no. Pig’s feet. I was at a funeral.

FIRST WATCH

{Draws hit truncheon.) Liar!

{The beagle lijts his snout, showing the grey scorbutic face oJ Paddy

449 20

Dignrjm. He has gna^jned all. He exhales a putrid carcasejed breath.
He grcnis to human size and shape. His dachshund coat becomes
a brou n mortuary habit. His green eye flashes bloodshot. Half oj
one ear, all the nose and both thumbs are ghouleaten.)

PADDY DIGNAM

{In a hollow voice.) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucanc
pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural
causes.

{He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)

BLOOM

{In triumph.) You hear?

PADDY DIGNAM

Bloom, I am Paddy Dignam’s spirit. List, list, O list!

BLOOM

The voice is the voice of Esau.

SECOND WATCH

{Blesses himself.) How is that possible?

FIRST WATCH

It is not in the penny catechism.

PADDY DIGNAM

By metempsychosis. Spooks.

O rocks.

A VOICE

PADDY DIGNAM

{Earnestly.) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton, solicitor,
commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor’s Walk. Now
I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The

450

poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off
that bottle of sherry. {He looks round him.) A lamp. I must satisfy
an animal need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.

{The portly figure oj John O'Connell, caretaker, stands Jorth,
holding a hunch oJ keys tied -with crape. Beside him stands Father
Copy, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna
nightcap, holding sleepily a stafi oj twisted poppies.)

KATHER COFFEY

{Taicns, then chants with a hoarse croak.) Naimne. Jacobs Vobiscuits.
Amen.

JOHN o’cONNELL

{Foghorns stormily through his megaphone.) Dignam, Patrick T.,
deceased.

PADDY DIGNAM

{With pricked up ears, winces.) Overtones. {He wriggles forward,
places an ear to the ground.) My master s voice!

JOHN o’CONNELL

Burial docket letter number U. P. Eightyfive thousand. Field
seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.

{Paddy Dignam listens with visible eprt, thinking, his tail stifi-
pointed, his ears cocked.)

PADDY DIGNAM

Pray for the repose of his soul.

{He worms down through a coalhole, his brown habit trailing its
tether over rattling pebbles. After him toddles an obese grandfather
rat on fungus turtle paws under a grey carapace. Dignam svosce,
muffled, is heard baying under ground: Dignam’s dead ^d gone
below. Tom Rockford, robinredbreasted, in cap and breeches, yumps
from his twocolumned machine.)

TOM ROCHFORD

{A hand to his breastbone, bows.) Reuben J. A florin I find him,

45 >

{He fixes the manhole with a resolute stare.) My turn now on. Follow
me up to Carlow.

{He executes a daredevil salmon leap in the air and is engulfed
in the coalhole. Two discs on the columns wobble eyes of nought.
All recedes. Bloom plodges forward again. He stands before a
lighted house, listening. The lasses, winging from their bowers, fly
about him, twittering, warbling, cooing.)

THE KISSES

{W arbling.) Leo! {Twittering.) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo!
{Cooing.) Coo coocoo! Yummyumm Womwom! {Warbling.) Big
comebig! Pirouette! Lcopopold! {Twittering.) Lecolec! {Warb-
ling.) O Leo!

{They rustle, flutter upon his garments, alight, bright giddy flecks,
silvery sequins.)

BLOOM

A man’s touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.

{Zoe Higgins, a young whore in a sapphire slip, closed with
three bronze buckles, a slim black velvet fillet round her throat,
nods, trips down the steps and accosts him.)

ZOE

Arc you looking for someone? He’s inside with his friend.

%

BLOOM

Is this Mrs Mack’s?

ZOE

cightyonc. Mrs Cohen’s, You might go farther and fare worse.
Mother Slippcrslapper. {Familiarly.) She’s on the job herself tonight
with the vet, her tipster, that gives her all the winners and pays for
her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck’s turned today.
{Suspiciously.) You’re not his father, arc you?

BLOOM

Not I!

452

ZOE

You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?

(H/s skin^ alert yjeels her fingertips approach. A hand slides over
his lejt thigh.)

20E

How's the nuts?

BLOOM

Off side* Curiously they arc on the right. Heavier I suppose. One
in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.

ZOE

(//? suddtft dlurfn.) You vc a hard chancre.

Not likely.

BLOOM

ZOE

I feel it.

{Her hand slides into his lejt trouser pocket and brings out a hard
black shrivelled potato. She regards it and Bloom with dumb moist

lips.)

BLOOM

A talisman. Heirloom.

ZOE

For Zoe? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?

{She puts the potato greedily into a pockety then links his arm^
cuddling him with supple warmth. He smiles uneasily. Slowly,
note by note, oriental music is played. He gazes in the tawny
crystal oj her eyes, ringed with kohol. His smile sojtens.)

ZOE

You’ll know me the next time.

BLOOM

(Forlornly.) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to . . .

453

{Gazelles are leaping, jeedmg on the mountains. Near are lakes.
Round their shores Jile shado-ws black oj cedargroves. Aroma rises,
a strong hairgrou'th oj resin. It burns, the orient, a sky oj sapphire,
clejt by the bronze flight oj eagles. Under it lies the womancity,
nude, uhite, still, cool, in luxury. A jountain murmurs among
damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur oj scarlet wmegrapes.
A 'iiinc oj shame, lust, blood exudes, strangely murmuring,^

ZOE

{Murmuring singsong with the music, her odalisk lips lusciously
smeared with salve oj swinejat and rosewater.)

Schorach ani wenowach, benoith Hierushaloim.

BLOOM

{Fascinated.) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.

ZOE

And you know what thought did?

{She bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him
a cloying breath oj stale garlic. The roses draw apart, disclose a
sepulchre oj the gold oj kings and their mouldering bones.)

BLOOM

{Draws back, mechanically caressing her right bub with a flat awkward
hand.) Are you a Dublin girl?

ZOE

{Catches a stray hair dejtly and twists it to her coil.) No bloody fear.
I’m English. Have you a swaggerroot?

BLOOM

{As bejore.) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish

device. {Lewdly.) The mouth can be better engaged than with a
cylinder of rank weed.

454

ZOK

jQp on. Make a stump speech out of it.

BLOOM

(/» workman's corduroy (roeralls, Slack gansy with red fioating tie and
apache cap.) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Walter Raleigh brought
from the new world ihat potato and that weed, the one a killer of
pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart,
memory, will, understanding, all. That is to say, he brought the
poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget
brought the food. Suicide. Lies. All our habits. Why, look at our
public life!

{^Midnight chimes Jrom distant steeples.)

THE CHIMES

Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin!

BLOOM

{In alderman s gown and chain.) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay,
Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say,
from the cattlcmarket to the river. That’s the music of the future.
That’s my programme. Cut bono? But our buccaneering Vander-
deckens in their phantom ship of finance . . .

AN ELECTOR

Three times three for our future chief magistrate!

( The aurora borealis oj the torchlight procession leaps . )

THE TORCHBEARER.S

Hooray 1

{Several wellknown burgesses^ city magnates and freemen oj the city
shake hands with Bloom and congratulate him. Timothy Harrington,
late thrice Lord Mayor oj Dublin, imposing in mayoral scarlet,
gold chain and white silk tie, confers with councillor Larcan Sherlock,
locum tenens. They nod vigorously in agreement.)

455

I-ATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON

[In scarlet robe uitb mace, gold mayoral chain and large •white silk
scarf.) That alderman sir Leo Bloom’s speech be printed at the
expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was born be
ornamented with a comnKmorative tablet and that the thoroughfare
hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth desig-
nated Boulevard Bloom.

COUNCILLOR LORCAN SHERLOCK
Carried unanimously.

BLOOM

{Impassionedly.) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they
recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they.^
Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving
apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual
iiiurder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts
upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are
grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phart-
ridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is
rover for rever and ever and cv . . .

[Prolonged applause. Venetian masts, maypoles and festal arches
spring up. A streamer bearing the legends Cead Mille Failte and
Mah Ttob Mclek Israel spans the street. All the windows are
thronged with sightseers, chiefly ladies. Along the route the regiments
of the royal Dublin Fusiliers, the King's own Scottish Borderers,
the Cameron Highlanders and the Welsh Fusiliers, standing to
attention, keep back the crowd. Boys from High school are perched
on the lampposts, telegraph poles, windowsills, cornices, gutters,
chimneypots, railings, rainspouts, whistling and cheering. The pillar
of the cloud appears. A fife and drum band is heard in the distance
playing the Kol Nidre. The beaters approach with imperial eagles
hoisted, trailing banners and waving oriental palms. The chrysele-
phantine papal standard rises high, surrounded by pennons of the
civic flag. The van of the procession appears headed by “John
Howard Parnell, city marshal, in a chessboard tabard, the Athlone
Poursuivant and Ulster King of Arms. They are followed by the
Right Honourable Joseph Hutchinson, lord mayor of Dublin, the

456

lord mayor oj Cork, their viorships the mayors oj Limerick, Galway,
Sligo and Waterjord, twentyeight Irish representative peers, sirdars,
grandees and maharajahs bearing the cloth oJ estate, the Dublin
Metropolitan Fire Brigade, the chapter oj the saints oj finance in
their plutocratic order oj precedence, the bishop oj Down and
Connor, His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue archbishop oj
Armagh, primate oj all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend
Dr William Alexander, archbishop oj Armagh, primate oj all
Ireland, the chiej rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads oj
the baptist, anabaptist, methodist and Moravian chapels and the
honorary secretary oj the society oj jriends. Ajter them march the
guilds and trades and trainbands with flying colours: coopers, bird
janciers, millwrights, newspaper canvassers, law scriveners,
masseurs, vintners, trussmakers, chimney sweeps, lard refiners,
tabinet and poplin weavers, jarriers, Italian warehousemen, church
decorators, bootjack manujacturers, undertakers, silk mercers,
lapidaries, salesmasters, corkcutters, assessors oj fire losses, dyers
and cleaners, export bottlers, jellmongers, ticketwriiers, heraldic
seal engravers, horse repository hands, bullion brokers, cricket and
archery outfitters, riddlemakers, egg and potato jactors, hosiers
and glcrvers, plumbing contractors. Ajter them march gentlemen
oj the bed chamber. Black Rod, Deputy Garter, Gold Stick, the
master oj horse, the lord great chamberlain, the earl marshal, the
high constable carrying the sword oj state, saint Stephen's iron
crown, the chalice and bible. Four buglers on joot blow a sennet.
Beejeaters reply, winding clarions oj welcome. Under an arch oj
triumph Bloom appears bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantle
trimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff, the orb and
sceptre with the dove, the curtana. He is seated on a milkwhite
horse with long flowing crimson tail, richly caparisoned, with golden
headstall. Wild excitement. The ladies jrom their balconies throw
down rosepetals. The air is perjumed with essences. The men cheer.
Bloom's boys run amid the bystanders with branches oj hawthorn and

wenbushes.)

bloom’s boys

The wren, the wren,

The king of all birds,

Saint Stephen’s his day,

Was caught in the furze.

457

A BLACKSMITH

{Murmurs.) For the Honour of God! And is that Bloom? He
scarcely looks thirtyone.

A PAVIOR AND FLAGGER

That’s the famous Bloom now, the world’s greatest reformer. Hats
off!

{All uncover their heads. Women whisper eagerly.)

A MILLIONAIRESS

{Richly.) Isn’t he simply wonderful?

A NOBLEWOMAN

{Nobly.) All that man has seen!

A FEMINIST

{Masculinely.) And done!

A BELLHANGER

A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.

{Bloom's weather. A sunburst appears in the northwest.)

THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR

I here present your undoubted emperor president and king chairman,
the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm.
God save Leopold the First!

ALL

God save Leopold the First!

BLOOM

(/;; dalmatic and purple mantle ^ to the bishop of Down and Connor,
with dignity.) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.

458

WILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH

{In purple stock and shovel hat.) Will you to your power cause law
and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and
territories thereunto belonging?

BLOOM

{Placing his right hand on his testicles, s^vears.) So may the Creator
deal with me. All this I promise to do.

MICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH

{Pours a cruse oj hairoil over Blooms head.) Gaudium magnum
annuntio vobis. Habemus carnejicem. Leopold, Patrick, .'\ndrew,
David, George, be thou anointed!

{Bloom assumes a mantle oj cloth oj gold and puts on a ruby ring.

He ascends and stands on the stone oj destiny. The representative
peers put on at the same time their twentyeight croons. Joybells
ring in Christ church, Saint Patrick's, George’s and gay Matahide.
Mirus bazaar Jirevcorks go up jnom all sides with symbolical phallo-
pyrotechnic designs. The peers do homage, one by one, approaching
and genujlecting.)

IHE PEERS

I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.
{Bloom holds up his right hand on which sparkles the Koh-i-Noor
diamond. His paljrey neighs. Immediate silence. Wireless inter-
continental and interplanetary transmitters are set jor reception
oj messagt.)

BLOOM

My subicctsl Wc hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula
Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day
repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon
the princess Selene, the splendour of night.

{The jormer morganatic spouse oj Bloom is hastily removed in the
Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver
crescent on her head, descends jrom a Sedan chair, borne by two
giants. An outburst oj cheering.)

459

JOHN HOWARD PARNELL

{Raises the royal standard.) Illustrious Bloom! Successor to my
famous brother!

BLOOM

{Embraces John Howard Parnell.) We thank you from our heart,
John, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land
of our common ancestors.

{The Jreedom of the city is presented to him embodied in a charter.
The keys of Dublin ^ crossed on a crimson cushion^ are given to him.
He shows all that he is wearing green socks.)

TOM KERNAN

You deserve it, your honour.

BLOOM

On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy
at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his
lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All
is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo!
We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the
heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry, Bonajide Sabaoth^ sabred
the Saracen gunners to a man.

THE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS

Hear! Hear!

JOHN WYSE NOLAN

There’s the man that got away James Stephens.

A BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY

Bravo!

AN OLD RESIDENT

You’re a credit to your country, sir, that’s what you are,

AN APPLEWOMAN

He’s a man like Ireland wants.

460

BLOOM

My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you
verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall
ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new
Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.

(ThirtytVfO workmen wearing rosettes, Jfom all the counties oj
Ireland, under the guidance oJ Derwan the builder, construct the
new Bloomusalem. It is a colossal edifice, with crystal rooj, built
in the shape oj a huge pork kidney, containing jorty thousand rooms.
In the course oj its extension several buildings and monuments are
demolished. Government offices are temporarily transjerred to
railway sheds. Numerous houses are razed to the ground. The
inhabitants are lodged in barrels and boxes, all marked in red
with the letters: L. B. Several paupers jail jrom a ladder. A
part oj the walls oj Dublin, crowded with loyal sightseers, collapses.)

THE SIGHTSEERS

(Dying.) Morituri te salutant. (They die.)

(A man in a brown macintosh springs up through a trapdoor. He
points an elongated finger at Bloom.)

THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH

Don’t you believe a word he says. That man is Leopold M'Intosh,
the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Higgins.

BLOOM

Shoot him! Dog of a Christian! So much for MTntosh!

(A cannonshot. The man in the macintosh disappears. Bloom
with his sceptre strikes down poppies. The instantaneous deaths
oj many powerjul enemies, grazsers, members oj parliament, members
oj standing committees, are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute
Maundy money, commemoration medals, loaves and fishes, temperance
badges, expensive Henry Clay cigars, jree cowbones jor soup,
rubber preservatives, in sealed envelopes tied with gold thread,
butter scotch, pineapple rock, billets doux in the jorm oj cocked

hats, reaJymade suits, porringers oj toad in the hole, bottles oj J eyes'
Fluid, purchase stamps, 40 days' indulgences, spurious coins, dairyjed
pork sausages, theatre passes, season tickets available jar all tram
lines, coupons oj the royal and privileged Hungarian lottery, penny
dinner counters, cheap reprints oj the World's Twelve Worst Books:
Froggy and Fritz, {politic). Care oj the Baby {injantUic), 50 Meals
jor 7 jb {culinic). Was Jesus a Sun Myth? {historic). Expel that
Pain {medic), Injant s Compendium oj the Universe {cosmic). Let's
All Chortle {hilaric), Canvasser s V ade Mecum {journalic), Love^
letters oj Mother Assistant {erotic). Who's Who in Space {astric).
Songs that Reached Our Heart {melodic). Pennywise's Way to
Wealth {parsimonic). A general rush and scramble. Women press
jorward to touch the hem oj Bloom's robe. The lady Gwendolen
Dubedat bursts through the throng, leaps on his horse and kisses
him on both cheeks amid great acclamation. A magnesium jlashlight
photograph is taken. Babes and sucklings are held up.)

THE WOMEN

Little father! Little father!

THE BABES and SUCKLINGS

Clap clap hands till Poldy comes home,

Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.

{Bloom, bending down, pokes Baby Boardman gently in the stomach.)

BABY BOARDMAN

{Hiccups, curdled milk jlowingjrom his mouth.) Hajajaja.

BLOOM

{Shaking hands with a blind stripling.) My more than Brother! {placing
his arms round the shoulders oj an old couple.) Dear old fricndsl
{He plays pussy jourcorners with ragged boys and girls.) Peep! Bopcep!
{He wheels twins in a perambulator.) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe?
{He perjorms juggler s tricks, draws red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
indigo and violet silk handkerchiejs jrom his mouth.) Roygbiv. 32 feet
per second. {He consoles a widow.) Absence makes the heart grow

younger. {He dances the Highland fling 'with ^otes^ue anttes.) Leg

it, ye devils! {He kisses the bedsores oj a palsied veteran.) Honourable
wounds! {He trips up a Jat policeman.) U.p.: up. U.p.: up. {Heu'htspers
in the ear of a blushing uaitress and laughs kindly.) Ah, naughty,
naughty! {He eats a raw turnip oflered him by Maurice Butterly

farmer.) Fine! Splendid! {He rejuses to accept three shillings oflered

him by "Joseph Hynes, journalist.) My dear fellow, not at all. {He
^es his coat to a beggar.) Please accept. {He takes part m a stomach
race with elderly male and jemale cripples.) Come on, boys! Wriggle

it, girls!

THE CITIZEN

{Choked with emotion, brushes aside a tear in his emerald muffier.)
May the good God bless him!

{The rams' horns sound jor silence. The standard oj Zion is hoisted.)

BLOOM

{Uncloaks impressively, revealing obesity, unrolls ^

solemnly.) Alcph Beth Ghimcl Dalcth Hagadah

Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Beni Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth

Askenazim Meshuggah Talilh.

{^n official translation is read by Jimmy Henry, assistant town
clerk.)

JIMMY HENRY

The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most

will now administer open air justice. Free medica an ega ’

solution of doubles and other problems. All cord.aUy invited Given
at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year i of the Paradisiacal Era.

PADDY LEO.NARD

What am I to do about my rates and taxes?

Pay them, my friend.

BLOOM

Thank you.

PADDY LEONARD

463

NOSEY FLYNN

Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?

BLOOM

{Obdurately.') Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you arc bound
over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five

j. j. o’molloy
A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O’Brien!

nosey FLYNN

Where oo I draw the five pounds?

PissER burke

For bladder trouble?

BLOOM

Acid. nil. hydrochhr dil.y 20 minims,

Tinct. mix. vom.^ 4 minims.

Exir. laraxel. /»>., jo minims.

Aq. dis. ter in die.

CHRIS CALLINAN

What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?

BLOOM

Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.

JOE HYNES

Why aren’t you in uniform?

BLOOM

When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the
Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?

464

BEN DOLLARD

Pansies?

BLOOM

Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.

BEN DOLLARD

When twins arrive?

BLOOM

Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.

LARRY o’ROURJCE

An eight day licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir
Leo, when you were in number seven. I’m sending around a dozen

of stout for the missus.

BLOOM

{Coldly.) You have the advantage of me. Lady Bloom accepts no
presents.

CROFTON

This is indeed a festivity.

BLOOM

{Solemnly.) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.

ALEXANDER KEYES

When will we have our own house of keys?

BLOOM

I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten com-
mandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and
gentile. Three acres and a cow for aU children of nature. Saloo
motor hearses. Compulsory manual labour for idl. P^ks »pe"
to the public day and nigbt. Electric dishscrubben. Tubercuteis.
lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease ^fnerd amnesty
weekly carnival, with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto, the

46s

universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongcrs and
dropsical impostors. Free money, free love and a free lay church in a
free lay state.

o’madden burke
Free fox in a free henroost.

DAVY BYRNE

[Tavning.) liiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!

BLOOM

Mixed races and mixed marriage.

LENEHAN

What about mixed bathing?

{Bloom explains to those near him his schemes jor social regeneration.
All agree 'with him. The keeper oj the Kildare Street Museum
appears, dragging a lorry on -which are the shaking statues oJ several
naked goddesses, V enus Callipyge, Venus Pandemos, Venus Metem-
psychosis, and plaster figures, also naked, representing the nev
nine muses. Commerce, Operatic Music, Amor, Publicity, Manu-
Jacture, Liberty oj Speech, Plural Voting, Gastronomy, Private
Hygiene, Seaside Concert Entertainments, Painless Obstetrics and
Astronomy jor the People.)

FATHER FARLEY

He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to over-
throw our holy faith.

MRS RIORDAN

{Tears up her •will.) I’m disappointed in you! You bad man I

MOTHER GROGAN

her boot to throw it at Bloom.) You beastl You abominable

{Removes
person 1

466

NOSEY FLYNN

Give US a tunc. Bloom. One of the old sweet songs.

BLOOM

(U'ith rollicking humour.)

I vowed that I never would leave her,

She turned out a cruel deceiver.

^Vith my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.

HOPPY HOLOHAN

Good old Bloom! There’s nobody like him aftcr all.

Stage Irishmanl

PADDY LEONARD

BLOOM

What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of
Casteele. {laughter.)

LENEHAN

Plagiaristl Down with Bloom!

THE VEILED SIBYL

{Enthusiastically.) I’m a Bloomitc and I glory in it. I believe in him
in spite of all. I’d give my life for him, the funniest man on earth.

BLOOM

{Winks at the bystanders^) I bet she’s a bonny lassie.

THEODORE PDREFOY

{In fishing cap and oilskin jacket.) He employs a mechanical device
to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.

THE VEILED SIBYL

{Stabs herselj.) My hero godl {She dies.)

467

{Many most attractive and enthusiastic women also commit suicide
by stabbing, drowning, drinking prussic acid, aconite, arsenic,
opening their veins, refusing food, casting themselves under steam-
rollers, from the top of kelson's Pillar, into the great vat of Guin-
ness's brewery, asphyxiating themselves by placing their heads in
gas ovens, hanging themselves in stylish garters, leaping from
windows of di^erent storeys.)

ALEXANDER J. DOWIE

(Violently.) Fcllowchristians and anti-BIoomites, the man called Bloom
is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to Christian men. A fiendish
libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave
precocious signs of infantile debauchery recalling the cities of the
plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with
infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apoc^ypse. A worshipper
of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The
stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil arc for him. Caliban!

THE MOB

Lynch him! Roast him! He’s as bad as Parnell was. Mr Foxl

(Mother Grogan throws her boot at Bloom. Several shopkeepers
from upper and lower Dorset street throw objects of little or no
commercial value, hambones, condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage,
stale bread, sheeps' tails, odd pieces of fat.)

BLOOM

(Dxcitedly.) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again.
By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snowl It was my brother
Henry. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin’s Bam.
Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen,
sgenl inn ban bata coisde gan capall, I call on my old friend, Dr
Malachi Mulligan, sex specialist, to give medical testimony on my
behalf.

OR MOIXIGAN

(In motor jertin, green motorgoggles on bus brow.) Dr Bloom is
bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's

468

private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock
hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust.
Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants.
There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity
is also latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely
idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In
consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory
and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have
made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid
test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him

to be Virgo intacta.

{Bloom holds his high grade hat over his genital organs.)

OR MADDEN

Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations
I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine
in the national teratological museum.

DR CROTTHERS

I have examined the patient’s urine. It is albuminoid. Salivation
is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.

DR PONCH COSTELLO

Hhc fetor judaicus U most perceptible.

DR DIXON

{Reads a bill of health.) Professor Bloom is a finished example of the
new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many
have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint
fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical
sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to
the court missionary of the Reformed Priests’ Protection Society
which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and i
can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan
food, cold dried grocer’s peas. He wears a hairshirt winter and summer
and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one

time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another
report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for
clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have
ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.

{General commotion and compassion, IV omen faint. A ^wealthy
American makes a street collection for Bloom. Gold and silver
coinst hank cheques^ banknotes, jrwelsy treasury bonds, maturing bills
of exchange, I. 0. V's, -wedding rings, watchchains, lockets, neck-
laces and bracelets are rapidly collected.)

BLOOM

0» I so want to be a mother.

MRS THORNTON

{In nursetender's gown.) Embrace me tight, dear. You’ll be soon
over it. Tight, dear.

{Bloom embraces her tightly and bears eight male yellow and white
children. They appear on a redcarpeted staircase adorned with
expensive plants. All are handsome, with valuable metallic faces,
wellmade, respectably dressed and wellconducted, speaking five
modern languages fluently and interested in various arts and sciences.
Each has his name printed in legible letters on his shirtfront:
Nasodoro, Goldfinger, Chrysostomos, Maindorie, Silversmile, Silber-
selber, Vifargent, Panargyros. They are immediately appointed
to positions of high public trust in several different countries as
managing directors of banks, traffic managers of railways, chairmen
of limited liability companies, vice chairmen of hotel syndicates.)

A VOICE

Bloom, arc you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?

BLOOM

{Darkly.) You have said it.

BROTHER BUZZ

Then perform a miracle.

470

BANTAM LYONS

Prophesy who "will win the Saint Lcgcr.

(Bloom walks on a net, covers his lejt eye with his left ear, passes
through several walls, climbs Nelsons Pillar, hangs from the
top ledge by his eyelids, eats twelve dozen oysters (^shells included),
heals several su^erers from king's evil, contracts his face so as to
resemble many historical personages. Lord Beaconsfeld, Lord Byron,
IVat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendels-
sohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean
Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock
Holmes, Pasteur, turns each foot simultaneously in diferent direc-
tions, bids the tide turn back, eclipses the sun by extending his little

finger.)

BRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO

(Jn papal zouave's uniform, steel cuirasses as breastplate, arm-
plates, thighplates, legplates, large profane moustaches and brown

paper mitre.)

Leopoldi autem generatio. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch
and Eunuch begat O’Halloran and O’Halloran begat Guggenheim
and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Nctaim and
Netaim begat Lc Hirech and Lc Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jwurum
begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky
begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz
and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoh begat Aranjuez and
Aranjuez begat Uwy Lawson and Lewy Dawson b^tlchabu^nosor
and Ichabudonosor begat O’Donnell Magnus and O Donnell Magnus
begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat Ben Maimun and Ben
Mumun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Benamor an
Benamor begat Joncs-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgn^ovi
and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat ’

tuniemc and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombath ly
begat Virag and Virag begat Bloom et vocabitur nomen etus Emmanuel.

A DEADHAND

{Writes on the wall.) Bloom U a cod.

47 *

A CRAB

[In bushranger s kit.) W’hat did you do in the cattlccrecp behind
Kilbarrack?

A FEMALE INFANT

[Shakes a rattle.) And under Ballybough bridge?

A HOLLYBUSH

And in the devil’s glen?

BLOOM

[Blushes juriously all over jrom jront to nates, three tears falling from
his lejt eye.) Sparc my past.

THE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS

[In bodycoats, kneebreeches, with Donnybrook jair shillelaghs.) Sjambok
him!

[Bloom with asses' ears seats himselj in the pillory with crossed
arms, hisjeet protruding. He whistles Don Giovanni, a cenar tcco.
Artane orphans. Joining hands, caper round him. Girls oj the
Prison Gate Mission, joining hands, caper round in the opposite
direction.)

THE ARTANE ORPHANS

You hi^, you hog, you dirty dog I
You think the ladies love youl

THE PRISON GATE GIRLS

If you sec kay
Tell him he may
See you in tea
Tell him from me.

HORNBLOWER

[In ephod and huntingcap, announces.) And he shall carry the sins
of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and
to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him,
yea, all from Agcndath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.

472

{^All the people cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide
travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him.
Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long
earlocks. They wag their beards at Bloom.)

MASTIANSKY AND CITRON

Belial! Laemlein of Istria! the false Messiah! Abulafia!

(George S. Mesias, Bloom's tailor, appears, a tailor's goose under
his arm, presenting a bill.)

MESIAS

To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.

BLOOM

(Rubs his hands cheerjully.) Just like old times. Poor Bloom!

(Reuben J. Dodd, blackbearded Iscariot, bad shepherd, bearing
on his shoulders the drowned corpse oj his son, approaches the pillory.)

REUBEN J.

(Whispers hoarsely.) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the
flatties. Nip the first rattler.

THE FIRE BRIGADE

Pflaap!

BROTHER BUZZ

(Invests Bloom in a yellow habit with embroidery oj painted flames and
high pointed hat. He places a bag oj gunpowder round his neck and
hands him over to the civil power, saying.) Forgive him his trespasses.

(lieutenant Myers oj the Dublin Fire Brigade by general request
sets fire to Bloom. Lamentations.)

THE CITIZEN

Thank heaven!

473

BLOOM

[In a seamless garment marked /. H. S. stands upright amid phcenix
flames.) Weep- not for me, O daughters of Erin.

[He exhibits to Dublin reporters traces oj burning. The daughters
oj Erin, in black garments ncith large prayerbooks and long lighted
candles in their hands, kneel down and pray.)

THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN

Kidney of Bloom, pray for us.

Flower of the Bath, pray for us.

Mentor of Menton, pray for us.

Canvasser for the Freeman, pray for us.

Charitable Mason, pray for us.

Wandering Soap, pray for us.

Sweets of Sin, pray for us.

Music without Words, pray for us.

Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us.

Friend of all Frillies, pray for us.

Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us.

Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.

[A choir oj six hundred voices, conducted by Mr Vincent O'Brien,
sings the Alleluia chorus, accompanied on the organ by Joseph
Glynn. Bloom becomes mute, shrunken, carbonised.)

ZOE

Talk away till you're black in the face.

BLOOM

[In caubeen with clay pipe stuck in the band, dusty brogues, an emigrant’s
red handkerchiej bundle in his hand, leading a black bogoak pig by a
sugaun, with a smile in his eye.) Let me be going now, woman of the
house, for by all the goats in Connemara I’m after having the father
and mother of a bating. [With a tear in his eye.) All insanity.
Patriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or
not to be. Life’s dream is o’er. End it peacefully. They can live
on. [He gazes jar away mournjully.) I am ruined. A few pastilles
of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. [He
breathes sojtly.) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.

474

ZOE

(Stiffly, her finger ,n krr neckJilUt.) Honest? Till the next time. {She
sneers') Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too
quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts.

BLOOM

{Bitterly.) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle.

ZOE

{In sudden sulks.) I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding
whore a chance.

BLOOM

{Repentantly.) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil
Where arc you from? London?

ZOE

{Glibly.) Hog’s Norton where the pigs play the organs. I’m York-
shire born. {She holds his hand which isjeelingjor her nipple.) I say.
Tommy Tittlcmouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for
a short time? Ten shillings?

BLOOM

{Smiles, nods slowly.) More, houri, more.

ZOE

And more’s mother.? {She pats him oghandedly with vehet p^s.)
Arc you coming into the musicroom to sec our new pianola. Gome

and I’ll peel off.

BLOOM

(Feelinz hts occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment oj
a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry oj her ^eled pears.) Somebody
would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster.
{Earnestly.) You know how difficult it is. I needn t tell you.

ZOE

[Flattered.) VVhat the eye can’t sec the heart can’t grieve for. [She
pats him.) Come.

BLOOM

Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.

ZOE

Babby!

BLOOM

[In habyitnen and pelisse^ bigheaded^ with a caul oj dark hairy fixes
big eyes on her fiuid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a chubby
finger^ his moist tongue lolling and lisping.) One two tlec: tlcc llwo
tlone.

THE BUCKLES

Love me. Love me not. Love me.

ZOE

Silent means consent. [IVith little parted talons she captures his handy
her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch oJ secret monitor, luring
him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.

[He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards
the steps, drawing him by the odour oJ her armpits, the vice oj
her painted eyes, the rustle oj her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks
the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)

THE MALE BRUTES

[Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung and ramping in their loosebox,
faintly roaring, their drugged heads swaying to and fro.) GoodI

[Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister whores are
seated. They examine him curiously from under their pencilled
brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips awkwardly.)

ZOE

[Her lucky hand instantly saving him.) Hoopsal Don’t fall upstairs.

476

BLOOM

The just man falls seven times. {He stands aside at the threshold.')
After you is good manners.

ZOE

Ladies first, gentlemen after.

{She crosses the threshold. He hesitates. She turns and, holding
out her hands., draits him over. He hops. On the antlered rack oj
the hall hanga mans hat andicaterprooj. Bloom uncovers himselj hut,
seeing them,jroncnSy then smiles, preoccupied. A door on the return
landing is thrown open. A man in purple shirt and grey trousers,
hrownsocked, passes with an ape's gait, his hald head and goatee
heard upheld, hugging a Jull waterjugjar, his twotailed hlack braces
dangling at heels. Averting hisjace quickly Bloom hends to examine
on the halltahle the spaniel eyes oj a running Jox: then, his lijted head
sniffing,jollows Zoe into the musicroom. A shade oj mauve tissuepaper
dims the light oj the chandelier. Round and round a moth jiies,
colliding, escaping. The Jloor is covered with an oilcloth mosaic oj
jade and azure and cinnahar rhomboids. Footmarks are stamped
aver it in all senses, heel to heel, heel to hollow, toe to toe,jeet locked,
a morris oj shuffling jeet without body phantoms, all in a scrimmage
higgledypiggledy. The walls are tapestried with a paper oj yew-
jronds and clear glades. In the grate is spread a screen oj peacock
jeathers. Lynch squats crosslegged on the hearthrug oj matted hair,
his cap back to thejront. With a wand he beats time slowly. Kitty
Ricketts, a bony pallid whore in navy costume, doeskin gloves rolled
backjrom a coral wristlet, a chain purse in her hand, sits perched
on the edge oj the table swinging her leg and glancing at herselj
in the gilt mirror over the mantelpiece. A tag oj her corset lace
hangs slightly below her jacket. Lynch indicates mockingly the
couple at the piano.)

KITTY

{Coughs behind her hand.) She’s a bit imbccillic. {She signs with a
waggling jorejinger.) Blcmblcm. {Lynch lijts up her skirt and white
petticoat with the wand. She settles them down quickly.) Respect your-
self. {She hiccups, then bends quickly her sailor hat under which her
hair glows, red with henna.) O, cxcusci

477

ZOE

More limelight, Charley. [She goes to the chandelier and turns the gas
jull cock.)

KITTY

{Peers at the gasjet.) What ails it tonight?

LYNCH

[Deeply.) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.

ZOE

Clap on the back for Zoe.

[The "wand in Lynch's hand flashes: a brass poker. Stephen stands
at the pianola on -which sprawl his hat and ashplant. With two
fingers he repeats once more the series of empty fifths. Florry
Talbot^ a blond feeble goosefat whore in a tatterdemalion gown of
mildewed strawberry^ lolls spreadeagle in the sofa cornery her limp
forearm pendent over the bolstery listening. A heavy stye droops
over her sleepy eyelid.)

KITTY

[Hiccups again with a kick of her horsed foot.) O, cxcusci

ZOE

[Promptly.) Your boy’s thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.

[Kitty Ricketts bends her head. Her boa uncoilsy slidesy glides over
her shoulder y backy army chair to the ground. Lynch lifts the curled
caterpillar on his wand. She snakes her neeky nestling. Stephen
glances behind at the squatted figure with its cap back to the front.)

STEPHEN

As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Benedetto Marcello
found it or made it. The rite is the poet’s rest. It may be an old
hymn to Dcmeter or also illustrate Qala enarrant gloriam Domini.
It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and
mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round
David s that is Circe’s or what am I saying Ceres’ altar and David’s

478

tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about his almightincss.
Mats, nom de nom, that is another pair of trousers. Jetez la gourme.
Faut jeunesse se passe, (We stops, points at Lynch s cap, smiles,
laughs.) Which side is your knowledge bump?

THE CAP

{With saturnine spleen.) Bah! It is because it is. Woman’s reason.
Jewgreck is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of
life. Bah!

STEPHEN

You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes.
How long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!

THE CAP

Bah)

STEPHEN

Here’s another for you. {He Jrowns.) The reason is because the
fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible
interval which . . .

THE CAP

Which? Finish. You can’t.

STEPHEN

{With an efort.) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse.
Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.

THE CAP

Which?

{Outside the gramophone begins to blare The Holy City.)

STEPHEN

{Abruptly ) What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not
Itself. Ciod, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having
iuelf traversed in reality itself, becomes that self. Wait a moment.
Wait a second. Damn that fellow’s noise in the street. Self which
it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. Fccol

479

LYNCH

[H’itfi a mocking uAinny of laughter grins at Bloom and Zoe Higgins.)
\Vhat a learned speech, eh?

ZOE

{Briskly.) God help your head, he knows more than you have
forgotten.

{With obese stupidity Florry Talbot regards Stephen.)

FLORRY

They say the last day is coming this summer.

No!

KITTY

ZOE

{Explodes in laughter.) Great unjust God!

FLORRY

{Of ended.) Well, it w'as in the papers about Antichrist. O, my foot's
tickling.

{Ragged barefoot ne-wsboys, jogging a "wagtail kite, patter past,
yelling.)

THE NEWSBOYS

Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorsc races. Sea serpent in
the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.

{Stephen turns and sees Bloom.)

STEPHEN

A time, times and half a time.

{Reuben J. Antichrist, wandering jew, a clutching hand open on hts
spine, stumps forward. Across his loins is slung a pilgrim's wallet
from which protrude promissory notes and dishonoured bills. Aloft
over his shoulder he bears a long boatpole from the hook of which
the sodden huddled mass of his only son, saved from Ltffey waters,
hangs from the slack of its breeches. A hob^blin in the image of

480

Punch Costello, hipshot, crookbacked, hydrocephalic, prognathtc
wth receding jorehead and Ally Sloper nose, tumbles in somersaults
through the gathering darkness.)

ALL

What?

THE HOBGOBLIN

{His Jaws chattering, capers to and jro, goggling his eyes, squeaking,
kangaroohopping, with outstretched clutching arms, then all at once
thrusts his lipless jace through the Jork oj his thighs.) II vient! C est
moil L'homme qui ritl L'homme primigene! {He whirls round and
round with dervish howls.) Sieurs et dames, jaites vosjeux! {He crouches
juggling. Tiny roulette planets fly jrom his hands.) Les jeux sontjaitsl
{The planets rush together, uttering crepitant cracks.) Rien nva plus.
{The planets, buoyant balloons, sail swollen up and away. He springs

0^ into vacuum.)

FLORRV

{Sinking into torpor, crosses herself secretly.) The end of the world!

{A female tepid effluvium leaks out from her. Nebulous obscurity
occupies space. Through the drifting fog without the gramophone
blares over coughs and feetshuffling.)

THE GRAMOPHONE

Jerusalem!

Open your gates and sing
Hosanna . . .

{A rocket rushes up the sky and bursts. A white star falls from it,
proclaiming the consummation of all things and second coming of
Elijah. Along an infinite invisible tightrope taut from zenith
to nadir the End of the World, a twoheaded octopus in gillie’s kilts,
busby and tartan filibegs, whirls through the murk, head over heels,
in the form of the Three Legs of Man.)

THE END OP THE WORLD

{With a Scotch accent.) Wha’ll dance the keel row, the keel row, the
keel row?

481

21

(Over th( passing drijt and choking breathcoughs, Elijah's votce^
harsh as a corncrake s^ jars on high. Perspiring in a loose lawn
surplice with junnel sleeves he is seen, vergerjaced, above a rostrum
about which the banner 'of old glory is draped. He thumps the
parapet.')

ELIJAH

No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue,
Dave Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths
shut. Say, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God’s
time is 12.25. Tell moUier you’ll be there. Rush your order and
you play a slick ace. Join on right here! Book through to eternity
junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a
doggone clod? If the second advent came to Coney Island are we
ready? Florry Christ, Stephen Christ, Zoe Christ, Bloom Christ,
Kitty Christ, Lynch Christ, it’s up to you to sense that cosmic force.
Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the angels.
Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You
can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll. Are you
all in this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congrega-
tion, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You
got me? It’s a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It’s
the whole pie with jam in. It’s just the cutest snappiest line out.
It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know and
I am some vibrator. Joking apart and getting down to bedrock,
A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that?
O. K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That’s it. You
call me up by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps.
{He shouts.) Now then our glory song. All join heartily in the
singing. Encorel {He sings.) Jeru . . .

THE GRAMOPHONE
{Drowning his voice.)

. . . {The disc rasps gratingly against

THE THREE WHORES

{Covering their ears, squawk.) Ahhkkkl

482

Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh

the needle.)

ELIJAH

(In rolledup shirtsieevfSy black in the jace^ shouts at the top oj his voice,
his arm uplijted.) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear
what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe strong
in you, ’Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss Higgins
and Miss Ricketts got religion way inside them. Certainly seems to
me I don’t never see no wusser scared female than the way you been,
Miss Florry, Just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come
long and help me save our sisters dear. {He •winks at his audience.)
Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he ain’t saying nothing.

KITTY-KATE

I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on
Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop. My mother’s
sister married a Montmorency. It was a working plumber was my
ruination when I was pure.

ZOE-PANNY

I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.

PLORRY-TERESA

It was in consequence of a portwinc beverage on top of Hennessy s
three stars I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed.

STEPHEN

In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end.
Blessed be the eight beatitudes.

{The beatitudes^ Dixon, Madden, Crotthers, Costello, Unehan,
Bannon, Mulligan and Lynch, in vhite surreal students'
jour a^east, gposestepping, tramp jast past in noisy marching.)

{Incoherently.) Beer
buggerum bishop.

THE BEATITUDES

beef battledog buybull

483

businum barnum

LYSTER

{In quakergrey kneebreeches and broadbrimmed bat, says discreetly.)
He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the light.

{He corantos by. Best enters in hairdresser attire, shinily laundered,
his locks in curlpapers. He leads yohn Eglinton ucho wears a
mandarin's kimono oj Nankeen yellow, lizardlettered, and a high
pagoda hat.)

BEST

{Smiling, lijts the hat and displays a shaven poll jrom the crown oj
which bristles a pigtail toupee tied with an orange topknot.) I was just
beautifying him, don’t you know. A thing of beauty, don’t you know.
Yeats says, or 1 mean, Keats says.

JOHN EGLINTON

{Produces a greencapped dark lantern and Jiashes it towards a corner^
with carping accent.) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir.
I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants
the facts and means to get them.

{In the cone oj the searchlight behind the coalscuttle, ollave, holyeyed,
the bearded Jigure oj Mananaan MacUr broods, chin on knees.
He rises slowly. A cold seawind blows jrom his druid mantle. About
his head writhe eels and elvers. He is encrusted with weeds and shells.
His right hand holds a bicycle pump. His lejt hand grasps a huge
crayjish by its two talons.)

MANANAAN MACUR

{With a voice oj waves.) Aum! Hck! Wall Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma!
White yoghin of the Gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos.
{With a voice oj whistling seawind.) Punarjanam patsypunjaubi I
won t have my leg pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left,
the cult of Shakti. {With a cry oj stormSirds.) Shakti, Shiva! Dark
hidden Father! {He smites with his bicycle pump the crayjish in his
lejt hand. On its cooperative dial glow the twelve signs oj the zodiac.
He wails with the vehemence oj the ocean.) Auml Baum! PyjaumI
I am the light of the homestead, I am the dreamery creamery butter.

484

{A skeleton judashand strangles the light. The green light vanes
to mauve. The gasjet wails whistling.)

THE GASJET

Pooah! Pfuiiiiii!

[Zoe runs to the chandelier and, crooking her legy adjusts the mantle.)

Who has a fag as I’m here?

ZOE

LYNCH

{Tossing a cigarette on to the table.) Here.

ZOE

{Her head perched aside in mock pride.) Is that the way to hand the
pot to a Udy.^ {She stretches up to light the cigarette over the flame y
twirling it slowlyy showing the brown tufts of her armpits. Lynch with
his poker lifts boldly a side of her slip. Bare from her garters up her
flesh appears under the sapphire a nixie's green. She pufls calmly at her
cigarette.) Can you sec the beauty spot of my behind?

LYNCH

I’m not looking.

ZOE

{Makes sheep’s eyes.) No? You wouldn’t do a less thing. Would you
suck a lemon?

{Squinting in mock shame she glances with sidelong meaning at Bloomy
then twists round towards him, pulling her slip free of the poker.
Blue fluid again flows over her flesh. Bloom stands, smiling desir-
ously, twirling his thumbs. Kitty Ricketts licks her middle finger
with her spittle and gazing in the mirror, smooths both eyebrows.
Lipoti Virag, basiUcogrammate, chutes rapidly down through the
chimneyflue and struts two steps to the left on gawky pink stilts.
He is sausaged into several overcoats and wears a brown macintosh
under which he holds a roll of parchment. In his left eye flashes

the monocle oj Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell.

On his head-is perched an E^ptian pshent. Two quills project over
his ears.)

VIRAG

(Heels together^ bows.) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathcly.
(He coughs thoughtjully, drily.) Promiscuous nakedness is much in
evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the
fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which
you are a particular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I
hope you perceived? Good.

BLOOM

Granpapachi. But . . .

VIRAG

Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and coiffcusc
white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of gopherwood,
is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I should opine.
Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always understood that
the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie
appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a word.
HippogrifF. Am I right?

BLOOM

She is rather lean.

VIRAG

(Not unpleasantly.) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier
pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect arc devised to suggest
bunchincss of hip. A new pur^asc at some monster sale for which a
gull has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye.
Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you
tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallaxl (With a nervous
twitch oJ his head.) Did you hear my brain go snap? Polly-
syllabax!

BLOOM

(Hn elbow resting in a hand, a forefinger against his cheek.) She seems

^ad.

VIRAG

{Cynically, his ‘wcasel teeth bared yelltrw, draws down his left eye with a
finger and barks hoarsely.) Hoax! Beware of the Eapper and bogus
mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor s button discovered
by Rualdus Colombus. Xumblc her. Columble her. Chameleon.
{More genially.) Well then, permit me to draw your attention to
item number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye.
Observe the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What
ho, she bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and
deep in keel.

BL.OOM

{Regretjully.) When you come out without your gun.

VIRAG

We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your
money, take your choice. How happy could you be with cither . . .

BLOOM

With? . . .

VIRAG

{His tongue upcurling.) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is
coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in
weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two
protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the
noonday soupplate, while on her rcrc lower down are two additional
protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpa-
tion which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy
parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their
livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek
and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them
during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal
blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker
after. Wallow in it. Lycopodium. {His throat twitches.) Slapbangl
There he goes again.

BLOOM

The stye I dislike.

487

VIRAG

{Arches his eyebrows.) Contact with a goldring, they say. Argu-
mentum adjeminam, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the
consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosaurus. For the rest Eve’s
sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. {He
twitches.) It is a funny sound. {He coughs encouragingly.) But possibly
it is only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will
have taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.

BLOOM

{Refecting.) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This
searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter
of accidents. W^ait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said . . .

VIRAG

{Severely^ his nose hardhumpedy his side eye winking.) Stop twirling your
thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise
your mnemotechnic. La causa e santa. Tara. Tara. {Aside.) He
will surely remember.

BLOOM

Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic
tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand
cures. Mnemo?

VIRAG

{Excitedly.) I say so. I say so. E’en so. Technic. {He taps his
parchmentroll energetically.) This book tells you how to act with all
descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite,
melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk
about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved.
Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the
venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind
whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? {With a dry
snigger.) You intended to devote an entire year to the study of the
religious problem and the summer months of 1882 to square the
circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the
ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gusseted

488

X

knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations,
camiknickers? {Ht crows derisively.) Kcckeercekee!

{Bloom surveys uncertainly the three whores, then gazes at the
veiled mauve light, hearing the everfiying moth.)

BLOOM

I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence
this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What
now is will then tomorrow as now was be past yester.

VIRAG

(Prompts into his ear in a pig's whisper.) Insects of the day spend their
brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the infcnorly
pulchritudinous female possessing extendified pudendal verve m ^rsal
region. Pretty Poll! {His yellow parrotbeak gabbles nasally.) I hey
had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand
five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablcspoonful of honey will
attract friend Bruin nore than half a dozen barrels of first choice
malt vinegar. Bear’s buzz bothers bees. But of this apart, .-^.t another
time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. {He coughs
and, bending his brow, rubs his nose thoughtjully with a sco:,ping hand.)
You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion lor
remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points
sec the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the
Love Passion which Doctor L. B. says is the book sensation of the year.
Some, to example, there are again whose movements arc automatic.
Perceive. That is his appropriate sun, Nightbird nightsun nigni-
town« Chase me, Charley! Buzz!

BLOOM

Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self
then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I . . .

VIRAG

(His face impassive, laughs in a rich Jeminine key.) Splendid! Spanish
flv in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. {He gobbles gluttonously
with turkey wattles.) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jockl Where are we?

489

Open Sesame! Cometh forth! unrolls his parchment rapidly and
reads, his glowworm's nose running backwards over the letters which he
claws.) Stay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Rcdbank oysters
will shortly be upon us. I’m the best o’cook. Those succulent bivalves
may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through
mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous
debility or viragitis. Though they stink yet they sting. {He wags
head with cackling raillery.) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular.

BLOOM

{Absently.) Ocularly wonun’s bivalve case is W’orse. Always open
sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things.
Yet Eve and the serpent contradict. Not a historical fact. Obvious
analogy to my idea. Serpents too arc gluttons for woman’s milk.
Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent
her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads
of in Elephantuliasis.

VIRAG

{His mouth projected in hard wrinkles, eyes stonily forlornly closed,
psalms in outlandish monotone.) That the cows with their those distended
udders that they have been the known . . .

BLOOM

I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. {He repeats.)
Spontaneously to seek out the saurian’s lair in order to entrust
their teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. {Profoundly.) Instinct
rules the world. In life. In death.

VIRAG

{Head askew, arches his back and hunched wingshoulders, peers at
the moth out of blear bulged eyes, points a horning claw and cries^

WhosGcrGer? Who’s dear Gerald? O, I much fear he shall be most
badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so
catastrophics mit agitation of hrstclass tablenumpkin? {He mews.)
Luss puss puss puss! {He sighs, draws back and stares sideways down
with dropping underjaw.) Well, well. He doth rest anon.

490

I’m a tiny tiny thing
Ever flying in the spring
Round and round a ringaring.

Long ago I was a king,

Now I do this kind of thing
On the wing, on the wing!

Bing!

{He rushes against the mauve shade flapping noisily.) Pretty pretty
pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.

{From left upper entrance with tu:o sliding steps Henry Flower
comes forward to lejt jront centre. He wears a dark mantle and
drooping plumed sombrero. He carries a silverstringed inlaid
dulcimer and a longstemmed bamboo Jacob's pipe^ its clay bowl
fashioned as a female head. He wears dark velvet hose and silver-
buckled pumps. He has the romantic Saviour's face with flowing
locksy thin beard and moustache. His spindlelegs and sparrow
feet are those of the tenor Mario, prince of Candia. He settles
dmon his goflered rufls and moistens his lips with a passage of his

amorous tongue*)

HENRY

{In a low dulcet voice, touching the strings of his guitar.) There is
a flower that bloometh.

(Firag truculent, his jowl set, stares at the lamp. Grave Bloom
regards Zoe's neck. Henry gallant turns with pendent dewlap to

the piano*)

STEPHEN

{To himself.) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my
bcUy with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will ansc and go to
mv. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit
old Deasv or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on
me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow.
I’m partially drunk, by the way. {He touches the keys again.) Minor
chord comes now. Yes. Not much however.

{Almidano Artijoni holds out a batonroll of music with vigorous
moustachework.)

491

ARTIFONI

Ci rijletta. Lei rovina tut to.

FLORRY

Sing US something* Love's old sweet song.

STEPHEN

No voice. I am a most finished artist. Lynch, did I show you the
letter about the lute?

FLORRY

{Smirking.) The bird that can sing and won’t sing.

{The Siamese (wins, Philip Drunk and Philip Soher^ two Oxjord
dons with lawnmowers, appear in the window embrasure. Both
are masked with Matthew Arnold's face.)

PHILIP SOBER

Take a fool’s advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend
of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got,
two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney’s
en ville, Mooney’s sur mer, the Moira, Larchet’s, Holies street hospital,
Burke’s. Eh? I am watching you.

PHILIP DRUNK

{Impatiently.) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I
could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality.
Who was it told me his name? {His lawnmower begins to purr.) Aha,
yes. Zoe mou sas agapo. Have a notion I was here before. When
was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere? Mac somebody.
Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?

FLORRY

And the song?

STEPHEN

Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.

492

FLORRY

Are you out of Maynooth? You’re like someone I knew once

STEPHEN

Out of it now. {To himselj.) Clever.

PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER

{Their lawnmowers purring with a rigadoon oj grasshalms.) Clever
ever. Out of it. Out of it. By the by have you the book, the thing,
the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Clevercver outofitnow. Keep in
condition* Do like us*

ZOE

There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business
with his coat buttoned up. You needn’t try to hide, I says to him.

I know youVe a Roman collar.

VIRAG

Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. {Harshly, hts
pupils •waxing.) To hell with the popcl Nothing new under the sun.

I am the Virag who disclosed the sex secrets of monks and maidens.
Why I left the Church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the
Confessional. Penrose. Flipperty Jippert. {He wriggles.) Woman,
undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist
yoni to man’s lingam. Short time after man presents woman with
pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with
fcatherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big hngam, the stiff
one. {He cries.) Coactus volui. Then giddy woman will run about.
Strong man grasps woman’s wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks.
Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman’s fat yadgana. {H< chases hts
tail.) PiffpaffI Popo! {He stops, sneezes.) Pchp! {He worries hts

butt.) Prrrrrht!

LYNCH

I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting
a bishop.

493

ZOE

{Spouts noalrus smoke through her nostrils.) He couldn’t get a connec-
tion. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.

Poor man!

BLOOM

ZOE

{Lightly.) Only for what happened him.

How?

BLOOM

VIRAG

{A diabolic rictus oj black luminosity contracting his visage^ cranes
his scraggy neck jorward. He lijts a mooncalj nozzle and howls.)
Verjiuchte Goiml He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed.
Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas lacchias, a Libyan
eunuch, the pope’s bastard. {He leans out on tortured jorepaws^ elbows
bent rigid, his eye agonising in his flat skullneck and yelps over the mute
world.) A son of a whore. Apocalypse.

KITTY

And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from
Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn’t
swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and
we all subscribed for the funeral.

PHILIP DRUNK

{Gravely.) Qui vous a mis dans cette flehue position, Philippe}

PHILIP SOBER

{Gaily.) C' it ait le sacri pigeon. Philippe,

{Kitty unpins her hat and sets it down calmly, patting her henna
hair. And a prettier, a daintier head oJ winsome curls was never
seen on a whore's shoulders. Lynch puts on her hat. She whips it ofl.)

494

LYNCH

(Lcughi.) And to such delights has MctchnikofF inoculated anthro
poid apes.

FLORRY

{Nods.) Locomotor ataxy.

ZOE

{Gaily.) O, my dictionary.

Three wise virgins.

LYNCH

VIRAG

(AgueMfn, prof me yUcrx .pawn foaming over h„ bon, epUep^t,
lipf.) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax orange flower. Panthe^
the Roman centurion, polluted her w.th hts gemtor.es. (.He .uch
out a flickering pho.phare.cent scorpion tongue, hts hand on hi. fork.)

Messiahl He burst her tympanum. (With M^Hokl Hultl

ierks hit hips in the cynical spasm.) Hik! Hck! Hak. Hokl H

Kokl Kukl

{Ben Jumho Bollard^ rubicund, musclebound, hatrynosinlled, huge-
bearded, cabbageeared, shaggychested, shockmaned, jatpapped,
stands jorth, his loins and genitals tightened into a pair oj black

bathing bagslops.)

BEN DOLLARD

(Nakkering Castanet bone, in hi. huge padded paw. yodel, jovially
in base barreltone.) When love absorbs my ardent soul.

(The virgins. Nurse Callan and Nurse Quigley, burst through
the ringkeepers and the ropes and mob him with open arms.)

THE VIRGINS

{Gusfungly.) Big Beni Ben MacChrecI

A VOICE

Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.

495

BEN DOLLARD

{Smites his thigh in abundant laughter,') Hold him now.

HENRY

{Caressing on his breast a severed jemale heady murmurs.) Thine heart,
mine love. {He plucks his lutestrings.) When first I saw . . .

. VIRAG

{Sloughing his skinsy his multitudinous plumage moulting.) Rats! {He
yawns, showing a coalblack throat and closes his jaws by an upward push
oj his parchment roll.) After having said which I took my departure.
Farewell. Fare thee well. DreckI

{Henry Flower combs his moustache and beard rapidly with a
pocketcomb and ^ves a cow's lick to his hair. Steered by his rapier^
he glides to the door, his wild harp slung behind him. Virag reaches
the door in two ungainly stilthops, his tail cocked, and dejtly claps
sideways on the wall a pusyellow flybill, butting it with his head.)

THE PLYBILL

K. 1 1, post no bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.

HENRY

Ail is lost now.

{Virag unscrews his head in a trice and holds it under his arm.)

Quack!

VIRAG S HEAD

{Exeunt severally.)

STEPHEN

{Over his shoulder to Zoe.) You would have preferred the fighting
parson who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes,
the dog sage, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The agony
in the closet.

LYNCH

All one and the same God to her.

496

STEPHEN

{Devoutly.) And Sovereign Lord of all thing'.

FLORRY

{To Stephen.) I’m sure you arc a spoiled priest. Or a monk.

LYNCH

He is. A Cardinal’s son.

STEPHEN

Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.

{His Eminence, Simon Stephen Cardinal Dedalus, Primate oj all
Ireland, appears in the doorway, dressed in red soutane, sandals
and socks. Seven dwarf simian acolytes, also in red, cardinal sins,
uphold his train, peeping under it. He wears a battered silk hat
sideways on his head His thumbs are stuck in hss armpits and hts
palms outspread. Round his neck hangs a rosary oj corks ending
on his breast in a corkscrew cross. Releasing his thumbs y he invokes
grace from on high with large wave gestures and proclaims with

bloated pomp.)

THE CARDINAL

Conservio lies captured.

He lies in the lowest dungeon

With manacles and chains around his limbs

Weighing upwards of three tons.

{He looks at all for a moment, his right eye closed tight, his left
cheek puffed out. Then, unable to repress his merriment, he rocks
to and fro, arms akimbo, and sings with broad rollicking humour.)

O, the poor little fellow

Hi-hi-hj-hi-his legs they were yellow

He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake

But some blo^y savage

To graizo his white cabbage

He murdered Nell Flaherty’s duckloving drake.

{A multitude of midges swarms aver his robe. He scratches himself
with crossed arms at his ribs, grimacing, and exclaims.)

497

2fi

I’m suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks
be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were
they’d walk me off the face of the bloody globe.

[His head aslant^ he blesses curtly with fore and middle Jingers,
imparts the Easter kiss and doubleshufles comically^ swaying
his hat jrom side to side, shrinking quickly to the size oj his train-
bearers. The dwarj acolytes, giggling, peeping, nudging, ogling,
Easterkissing, zigzag behind him. His voice is heard mellow jrom
ajar, mereijul, male, melodious.')

Shall carry my heart to thee,

Shall carry my heart to thee,

And the breath of the balmy night
Shall carry my heart to thee.

[The trick doorhandle turns.)

THE DOORHANDLE

Theeee.

ZOE

The devil is In that door.

[H male jorm passes down the creaking staircase and is heard
taking the waterproof and hat from the rack. Bloom starts forward
involuntarily and, half closing the door as he passes, takes the
chocolate from his pocket and o£ers it nervously to Zoe.)

ZOE

[Sni^s his hair briskly.) Hum. Thank your mother for the rabbits.
I’m very fond of what I like.

BLOOM

[Hearing a male voice in talk with the whores on the doorstep, pricks
his ears.) If it were he? Aftcr.^ Or because not? Or the double
event?

ZOE

[Tears open the silverfoil.) Fingers was made before forks. [She
breaks off and nibbles a piece, ^ves a piece to Kitty Ricketts and then

498

turns kittenishly to Lynch.) No objection to French lozenges {He
nods. She taunts him.) Have it now or wait till you get it? {He
opens his mouth, his head cocked. She whirls the prize in lejt circle.
His head jollows. She whirls it back in right circle. He eyes her.)

Catch.

(Sh€ tosses a piece. With an adroit snap he catches it and bites it
through with a crack.)

KITTY

{Chewing.) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely
ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his
lady. The gas we had on the Toft’s hobbyhorses. I’m giddy still.

BLOOM

{In Svengali's jur trvercoaf, with folded arms and Napoleonic forelock,
frowns in ventriloquial exorcism with piercing eagle glance towards the
door. Then, rigid, with left foot advanced, he makes a swift pass with
impelling fingers and gives the sign of past master, drawing his right
arm downwards from his left shoulder.) Go. go, go, I conjure you,
whoever you arc.

{A male cough and tread are heard passing through the mist
outside. Bloom’s features relax. He places a hand tn his waistcoat,
posing calmly. Zoe ofiers him chocolate.)

BLOOM

{Solemnly.) Thanks.

ZOE

Do as you’re bid. Here.

{A firm heelclacking is heard on the stairs.)

BLOOM

{Takes the chocolate.) Aphrodisiac? But I thought it. Vanilla calms
or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences lupus.
Colours affect women’s characters, any they have. This black makes
me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. {He eats.) Influence
taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro.

499

That priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at
Andrews.

{The door opens. Bella Cohen, a massive whoremistress enters.
She is dressed in a threequarter ivory gown, jringed round the
hem with tasselled selvedge, and cools herselj, flirting a black horn
fan like Minnie Hauck in Carmen. On her lejt hand are wedding
and keeper rings. Her eyes are deeply carboned. She has a sprouting
moustache. Her olive jace is heavy, slightly sweated and jullnosed,
with orangetainted nostrils. She has large pendant beryl eardrops.')

BELLA

My word! Tm all of a mucksweat.

{She glances around her at the couples. Then her eyes rest on Bloom
with hard insistence. Her large fan winnows wind towards her
heated jace, neck and embonpoint. Her jalcon eyes glitter.)

THE FAN

{Flirting quickly, then slowly.) Married, I sec.

BLOOM

Yes . . . Partly, I have mislaid . . .

THE FAN

{HalJ opening, then closing.) And the missus is master. Petticoat
government.

BLOOM

{Looks down with a sheepish grin.) That is so.

THE FAN

{Folding together, rests against her eardrop,) Have you forgotten me?

BLOOM

Ncs. Yo,

500

THE FAN

{Folded akimbo against her waist.) Is me her was you dreamed before?
Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same

now we? ; i / \

{Bella approaches^ gently tapping with the Jan.)

BLOOM

{Wincing.) Powerful being. In my eyes read that slumber which
women love.

THE FAN

{Tapping.) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.

BLOOM

(Cmved.) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domina-
tion. I am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to
speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before
the too late box of the general postofficc of human life. 1 he door
and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet
per second according to the law of falling bodies. I have felt this
instant a twinge of sciatica in my left gluicar muscle. It runs in our
family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from
it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter
waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamitc.
he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dogs spittle,
as you probably . . . {^t winces.) Ah!

RICHIE GOULDING

( Bagweighted, passes the door.) Mocking is catch. Best value in Dub.
Fit for a prince’s liver and kidney.

THE FAN

{Tapping.) All things end. Be mine. Now.

BLOOM

(Undecided.) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman.
Rain, exposure at devirfaU on the sea rocks, a peccadillo at my time
of life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause.

SOI

THE FAN

(^Points downwards slowly.) You may.

BLOOM

{Looks downwards and perceives her unfastened bootlace.) We are
observed.

THE FAN

{Points downwards quickly.) You must.

BLOOM

{With desire, with reluctance.) I can make a true black knot. Learned
when I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellet’s.
Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy.
I knelt once before today. Ah!

{Bella raises her gown slightly and, steadying her pose, lifts to the
edge of a chair a plump buskined hoof and a full pastern, silksocked.
Bloom, stiffiegged, ageing, bends over her hoof and with gentle
* draws out and in her laces.)

BLOOM

{Murmurs lovingly.) To be a shoefitter in Mansfield’s was my love’s
young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up
crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so
incredibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model
Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of
rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.

THE HOOF

Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.

BLOOM

{Crosslacing.) Too tight?

THE HOOP

If you bungle. Handy Andy, I’ll kick your football for you.

502

BLOOM

Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance.
Bad luck. Nook in wrong tache of her . . . person you mentioned.
That night she met . . . Nowl

{Ue knots the lace. Bella places her foot on the floor. Bloom raises
his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in mtdhrow.) His
tyes grdp dully darker and pouchedy his nose thickens.)

BLOOM

{Mumbles.) Awaiting your further orders, we remain, gentlemen . . .

BELLO

{With a hard basilisk stare, in a baritone voice.) Hound of dishonour!

{Infatuated.) Empress!

BLOOM

BELLO

{His heavy cheekehops sag^ng.) Adorer of the adulterous rumpl

{Plaintively.) Hugeness!

BLOOM

BELLO

Dungdevourerl

BLOOM

{With sinrws semiflexed.) Magnificence,

BELLO

Downl {He taps her on the shoulder -with his jan.) Incline feet forward!

Slide left foot one pace back. You will fall. You arc falling. On the
hands down!

BLOOM

{Her eyes upturned in the sign oj adrmration, closing.) Trufflcsl

{With a piercing epileptic cry she sinks on all jours, grunting,

503

snu^ing, rooting at his feet, then lies, shamming dead with eyes
shut tight, trembling eyelids, bowed upon the ground in the attitude
oj most excellent master.)

BELLO

{W ith bobbed hair, purple gills, jat moustache rings round his shaven
mouth, in mountaineer s puttees, green silverbuttoned coat, sport skirt
and alpine hat with moorcock's jeather, his hands stuck deep in his
breeches pockets, places his heel on her neck and grinds it in.) Feel my
entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot’s
glorious heels, so glistening in their proud crectness.

BLOOM

{Enthralled, bleats.) I promise never to disobey,

BELLO

{Laughs loudly.) Holy smoke! You little know what’s in store for
you. I’m the tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I’ll
bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son.
Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel
discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.

{Bloom creeps under the soja and peers out through the fringe.)

ZOE

{Widening her slip to screen her.) She’s not here.

BLOOM

( Closing her eyes.) She’s not here.

FLORRY

{Hiding her with her gown.) She didn’t mean it, Mr Bello. She’ll be
good, sir.

KITTY

Don t be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won’t, ma’amsir.

504

BELLO

iCoaxlngly.) Come, ducky dear. 1 want a word with you, darliny.
just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk,

(Bloom puti out her ttmid head.) There’s a good girly now. (,Heu

grabs her hair violently and drags her Joricard.) I only \N ant to correa
you for your own good on a soft safe spot. Ho«’s that tender behind.
O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.

BLOOM

{Fainting.) Don^t tear my . ♦ .

BELLO

(Savagely.) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging
hook, the knout I’ll make you kiss while the flutes play like the
Nubian slave of old. You’re in for it this time. I’ll make you remem-
ber me for the balance of your natural life. {His jorehead veins nvollen,
his face congested.) I shall sit on your ottomansaddleback every
morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson s fat ham
rashers and a bottle of Guinness’s porter. {He belches.) suck

my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the Licensed
Victualler's Gazette. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and
skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling
from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and
lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you.

{He twists her arm. Bloom squeaks^ turning turtle.)

BLOOM

Don’t be cruel, nurse! Don’t!

BELLO

{Twisting.) Another!

BLOOM

{Screams.) O, it’s hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches Ukc mad!

BELLO

(Shouts.) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That’s the best
bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don’t keep me waiting,
damn you. {He slaps her jaee.)

505

BLOOM

{Whimpers.) You’re after hitting me. I’ll tell . . .

BELLO

Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.

ZOE

Yes. Walk on him! I will.

FLORRY

I will. Don’t be greedy.

KITTY

No, me. Lend him to me.

( T he brothel cook, Mrs Keogh, wrinkled, grey bearded, in a greasy bib,
men's grey and green socks and brogues, floursmeared, a rollingpin
stuck with raw pastry in her bare red arm and hand, appears at
the door.)

MRS KEOGH

{ferociously.) Can I help.? {They hold and pinion nioom.)

BELLO

{Squats, with a grunt, on Bloom's upturned jace, puffing cigarsmoke,

m/rWng a Jat leg.) I sec Keating Clay is elected chairman of the

Richmond Asylum and bythcby Guinness's preference shares are at

sixteen three quarters. Curse me for a fool that I didn’t buy that lot

Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it.

And that Goddamned outsider Throwaway at twenty to one. {He

quenches his cigar angrily on Bloom's ear.) Where’s that Goddamned
cursed ashtray?

BLOOM

{Goaded, buttocksmothered.) O! 01 Monsten! Cruel one!

BELLO

Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg, pray for it as you never prayed
before. {He thrusts out a Jigged fist and joul cigar.) Here, kiss that.

506

Both. Kiss. {He throws a leg astride and, pressing with horseman s
knees, calls in a hard voiced Gcc up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross,
ril ride him for the Eclipse stakes. {He 6enh sideways and squeezes
his mount's testicles roughly, shouting.) Ho! off we pop! I’ll nurse
you in proper fashion. {He horserides cockhorse, leaping in the saddle.)
The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot
and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.

FLORRY

{Pulls at Bello.) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before
you.

ZOE

{Pulling at Florry.) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet,
suckeress?

BLOOM

{Stifling.) Can’t.

BELLO

Well, I’m not. Wait. {He holds in his breath.) Curse it. Here.
This bung’s about burst. {He uncorks himselj behind: then, contorting
his jeatures, jarts loudly.) Take thatl {He recorks himself.) Yes. by
Jingo, sixteen three quarters.

BLOOM

{A sweat breaking out over him.) Not man. {He snifls.) Woman.

BELLO

{Stands up.) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has
come to pass. Henceforth you arc unmanned and mine in earnest,
a thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will
shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Cohen? and don
the shot silk luxuriously rustling over head and shoulders and quickly

too.

BLOOM

{Shrinks.) Silk, mistress saidl O crinklyl scrapyl Must I tiptouch
it with my nails?

507

BELLO

{Points to his 'chores.') As they arc now, so will you be, wigged,
ringed, perfutnesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits.
Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced
\^ ith cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille, with whale-
bone busk, to the diamond trimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge,
uhilc your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in
nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things
.''tamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for
Alice and nice scent tor Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha
and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing
but the frillv Himsiness of lace round vour bare knees will remind

VOU • . ,

BLOOM

{A charming soubrette 'with dauby cheeks, mustard hair and large male
hands and nose, leering mouth.) I tried her things on only once, a
small prank, in Holies street. When w’c were hardup I washed them
to save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest
thrift.

BELLO

{Jeers.) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh! and showed off
coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn
blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat’s udders, in various poses
of surrender, eh? Ho! Ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black
operatop shift and short trunk leg naughtics all split up the stitches
at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandradc sold you from the Shel-
bourne Hotel, eh?

BLOOM

Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.

BELLO

{Guffaws.) Christ Almighty, it’s too tickling, this! You were a nicc-
loolang Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay
swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandradc, about to be
violated by Lieutenant Smythc-Smythc, Mr Philip Augustus Block-
w'ell, M.P., Signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert,

the liftboy, Henry Flcury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the
quadroon CrcEsus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto,
her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manor-
hamilton. {He gufaws again.) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese

cat laugh?

BLOOM

hands and jtaturcs 'icorking.) It was Gerald converted me to
be a true corsetlovcr when I was female impersonator in the High
School play Vice Versa. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink,
fascinated by sister’s stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky grease-
paint and gilds his eyelids. Cult of the beautiful.

BELLO

{With wicked glee.) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you
took your scat with womanish care, lifting your billowy Bounces,
on the smoothworn throne.

BLOOM

Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. {Earnestly.)
And really it’s better the position . . . because often I used to wet . . .

B£LLO

(Sternly.) No insubordination. The sawdust is there in the corner
for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn’t I? Do it standing, sir!
Til teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your
swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you’ll find I’m a martinet.
The sins of your past arc rising against you. Many. Hundreds.

THE SINS OF THE PAST

(In a medley of voices.) He went through a form of clandestine
marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black Church.
Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an
address in d’Olicr Street while he presented himself indecently to
the instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he encouraged a
nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary
outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he
wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strong-

509

membered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did
he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to sec if and
what and how much he could sec? Did he not lie in bed, the gross
boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wclluscd toilet paper
presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a
postal order?

BELLO

{Whistles loudly.) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity
in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out. Be
candid for once.

{Mute inhuman jaces throng forward^ leering^ vanishingy ffhhertng,
Booloohoom, Poldy Kocky Bootlaces a pennyy Cassidy's hagy blind
striplingy Larry RhinoceroSy the gyrly the woman, the whore, the other,
the . . .)

BLOOM

Don’t ask me. Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. 1 only thought the
half of the ... I swear on my sacred oath . . .

BELLO

{Peremptorily.) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing.
Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory
or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? \^at time?
With how many? I give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr...l

BLOOM

{Docile, gurgles.) I rcrerepugnosed in rerererepugnant . . .

BELLO

{Imperiously.) O get out, you skunkl Hold your tongue! Speak
when you’re spoken to.

BLOOM

{Bows.) Master! MistressI Mantamerl

{He lijts his arms. His bangle bracelets fall.)

Sio

BELLO

{Satirically.) By day you will souse and bat our smelling under-
clothes, also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with
dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won t that be nice?
{He places a ruby ring on her finger.) And there now! With this ring
I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.

Thank you, mistress.

BLOOM

BELLO

You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in
the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh’s the cooks, a sandy
one. Ay, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like
champagne. Drink me piping hot. Hop! you will dance attendance
or I’ll lecture you on your misdeeds. Miss Ruby, and spank your bare
bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush. You’ll be taught the error
of your ways. At night your wcllcreamed braceleted hands will wear
fortythreebutton gloves ncw'powdcred with talc and having delicately
scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their
lives. {He chuckles.) My boys will be no end charmed to see you so
ladylike, the colonel, above all. When they come here the night
before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First,
I’ll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named
Charles Alberta Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another
gentleman out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout
for a maid of all work at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile. Droop
shoulders. What offers? {He points.) For that lot trained by owner
to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. {He bares his arm and plunges
it elbcnodeep in Bloom's vulva.) There’s fine depth for youl What,
boys? That give you a harden? {He shoves his arm in a bidder's Jace.)
Here, wet the deck and wipe it round I

A florin I

A BIDDER

{Dillon's lacquey rings his handbell.)

A VOICE

One and eightpence too much.

5”

H;irang!

THE LACQUEY

CHARLES ALBERTA MARSH
Musi be virgin. Good breath. Clean.

BELLO

{Gives a rap ‘iviih his gavel.) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and
cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine
his points. Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this
tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy
to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to
lay within the hour. His sire’s milk record was a thousand gallons
of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa, my jewel! Beg up! Whoa!
{He brands his initial C on Bloom's croup.) So! Warranted Cohen!
What advance on two bob, gentlemen?

A 0ARKV.ISAGED MAN

{In disguised accent.) Hoondert punt sterlink.

VOICES

{Subdued.) For the Caliph Haroun AI Raschid.

BELLO

{Gaily.) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short
skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantelcttc, is a
potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartercd, with the
long straight scam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better
instincts of the blase man about town. Learn the smooth mincing
walk on four inch Louis XV heels, the Grecian bend with provoking
croup, the thighs flucscent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your

power of fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan
vices.

BLOOM

{ Bends his blushing j ace into his armpit and simpers •mith jorejinger
tn mouth.) O, I know what you’re hinting at now.

512

BELLO

What else arc you good for, an impotent thing like you? {He stoops
and, peering^ pokes "with his Jan rudely under the Jat suet folds oj Bloom s
haunches.) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where’s your
curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyoUy? Sing,
birdy, sing. It’s as limp as a boy of six’s doing his pooly behind a
cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. {Loudly.) Can you do a man s
job?

BLOOM

Ecclcs Street . . .

BELLO

{Sarcastically.) I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world but there’s
a man of brawn in possession there. The tables arc turned, my gay
young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well
for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps
and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot,
knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He s no eunuch. A
shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush!
Wait for nine months, my ladl Holy ginger, it’s kicking and coughing
up and down in her guts already! That makes you wild, don’t it?
Touches the spot? {He spits in contempt.) Spittoon!

BLOOM

1 was indecently treated, I . . . inform the police. Hundred pounds.
Unmentionable. I . . .

BELLO

Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want, not your
drizzle.

BLOOM

To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll! . . . We . . .

Still . . .

BELLO

{Ruthlessly.) No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman’s will
since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty
years. Return and sec.

{Old Sleepy Hollou) calls over the wold.)

5*3

SLEEPY HOLLOW

Rip Van-Winkle! Rip Van Winkle!

BLOOM

{In tattered moccasins with a rusty Jowlingpiece, tiptoeing^ Jinger-
tipping, his haggard bony bearded jace peering through the diamond
panes, cries out.) I sec her! It’s she! The first night at Mat Dillon’s!
But that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he . . .

BELLO

{Laughs mockingly.) That’s your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar
student.

{Milly Bloom, fairhaired, greenvested, slimsandalled, her blue scarf
in the seawind simply swirling, breaks from the arms of her lover
and calls, her young eyes wonderwide.)

MILLY

My! It s Papli! But. O Papli, how old you’ve grown!

BELLO

Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writing table where we never wrote.
Aunt Hcgarty’s armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man
and his menfriends are living there in clover. The Cuckoos' Rest!
Why not? How many women had you, say? Following them up
dark streets, fiatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts. What,
you male prostitute? Blameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn
about. Sauce for the goose, .my gander, O.

BLOOM

They ... I . . .

BELLO

i^uttingly.) Their hcelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you
boujght at Wren’s auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp
to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue
you earned home in the rain for art for art's sake. They will violate

514

the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your
handbook of astronomy to make them pipcspills. And they will spit
in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Lecdom s.

BLOOM

Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels.
I will prove. . .

A VOICE

Let me go* I will return.

Swcdr ^

{Bloom clenches his Jists and craicls Joward, a Aowie knije benceen

his Ueth.)

BELLO

As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late You have made your
sccondbcst bed and others must he m it. Your epitaph is written.
You arc down and out and don't you forget it, old bean.

BLOOM

Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody . . .?

{He bites his thumb.)

BELLO

Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace
about you. I can give you a rare old wine that 11 send you skipping
tp hel/and back. Sign a will and leave us any

have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We 11 bury you
in our shrubbLy jakes where you’ll be dead and dirty wi'k
Cuck Cohen, my stepnephew I marned, the bloody old go"‘y P
curator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or

eleven husbands, whatever the buggers names were

one cesspool. (He ev/>W« in a loud hugh.) We 11 manure

you, Mr^ Flower! (He piper icoffingty.) Byby, Poldyl Byby, Papli

BLOOM

{Clasps his head.) My wUl power! Memory! I have sinned! I have

* * ’ {He weeps fearlessly.)

5*5

BELLO

(Sneers.) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!

(B/oom, broken^ closely veiled Jor the sacrifice., sobs, his face to the
earth. The passing bell is heard. Darkshavited figures oj the cir-
cumcised, in sackcloth and ashes, stand by the wailing wall. M,
Shulomowitz, ^Joseph Goldwater, Moses Herzog, Harris Rosenberg,
M. Moisei, y. Citron, Minnie Watchman, O. Mastiansky, the
reverend Leopold Abramervitz, Chazen. With swaying arms they
wail in pneuma over the recreant Bloom.)

THE CIRCUMCISED

(/;; a dark guttural chant as they cast dead sea fruit upon him, no
fiowers.) Shema Israel Adonai Eiohenu Adonai Echad.

VOICES

(Sighing.) So he s gone. Ah, yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never
heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There’s the widow. That
so? Ah, yes.

(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphtre ascends. The pall
of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oak frame a
nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown art colours,
descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews, stands
over Bloom.)

THE YEWS

(Their leaves whispering.) Sister. Our sister, Ssh.

THE NYMPH

(softly.) Mortal! (Kindly.) Nay, dost not weepesti

BLOOM

(Crawls jellily forward under the boughs, streaked by sunlight, with
dignity.) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.

THE NYMPH

Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnic
makers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in flesh

516

tights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, .nusical
art the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that
smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen,
stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice
and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with testimonial
from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.

BLOOM

{IJjts a turtle head towards her tap.') We have met before. On another
star.

THE NYMPH

(Sadly.) Rubber goods. Neverrip. Brand as supplied to the aristo-
cracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited
testimonials for Professor Waldmann’s wonderful chest exuber. .^Iy
bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin

with photo.

BLOOM

You mean Photo B'ltsl

THE NYMPH

I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above
your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in
four places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom

and my shame.

BLOOM

(Humbly kisses her long hair.) Your classic curves, beautiful irnmortal.
I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to

pray.

THE NYMPH

During dark nights I heard your praise.

BLOOM

(Quickly.) Yes, yes. You mean that I . . . Sleep reveals the worst
side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of nay
bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the
rest there is that EngUsh invention, pamphlet of which I received

5*7

some days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless
inoffensive vent. {He sighs.) Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is
marriage.

THE NYMPH

{Herjingers in her ears.) And words. They are not in my dictionary.

You understood them.^

BLOOM

THE YEWS

Ssh.

THE NYMPH

{Covers herjace with her hand.) What have I not seen in that chamber?
What must my eyes look down on?

BLOOM

{Apologetically.) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with

care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea, long ago.

THE NYMPH

{Bends her head.) Worsel Worscl

BLOOM

{Refects precautiously.) That antiquated commode. It wasn’t her
weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds
after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd
orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle.

{The sound oj a waterfall is heard in bright cascade.)

THE WATERFALL

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Poulaphouca Poulaphouca.

THE YEWS

(Mingling their ioug/u.) Listen. Whisper. She is right

We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on
summer days.

, our sister,
languorous

JOHN WVSE NOLAN

{In the background, in Irish National Forester's uniform, dofs his plumed
hat.) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!

THE YEWS

{Murmuring.) Who came to Poulaphouca with the high school
excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?

BLOOM

{Pigeonbreasted, bottleshouldered, padded, in nondescript juvenile grey
and black striped suit, too small jor him, -white tennis shoes, bordered
stockings with turnover tops, and a red school cap with badge.) I was in
my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the
mingling odours of the ladies’ cloakroom and lavatory, the throng
penned tight on the old Royal stairs, for they love crushes, instincts
of the herd, and the dark scxsmelling theatre unbridles vice. Even a
pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots
that summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.

{Halcyon Days, high school boys in blue and white jootball jerseys
and shorts. Master Donald Turnbull, Master Abraham Chatterton,
Master Owen Goldberg, Master Jack Meredith, Master Percy
Apjohn, stand in a clearing of the trees and shout to Master J^eopold
Bloom.)

THE HALCYON DAYS

Mackerell Live us again. Hurray! {They cheer.)

BLOOM

{Hobbledehoy, warmgloved, mammamuffiered, stunned with spent snow-
balls, struggles to rise.) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let’s
ring all the bells in Montague Street. {He cheers feebly^ Hurray for
the High School!

THE ECHO

Fooll

THE YEWS

{Flustling.) She is right, our sLtcr. Whisper. {Whispered kisses are
heard in all the wood. Faces of hamadryads peep out from the boles and

5*9

among the leaves and break blossoming into bloom.') Who profaned our
5>ilent shade?

THE NYMPH

{Coyly through parting fingers.) There! In the open air?

THE YEWS

{Sueeping do-wnuard.) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.

THE WATERFALL

Poulaphouca Poulaphouca
Phoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.

THE NYMPH

{H^ith wide fingers.) O! Infamy!

BLOOM

I was precocious. Youth. The fauns. I sacrificed to the god of
the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time.
Capillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxen-
haired, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains, with
poor papa’s operaglasses. The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled
downhill at Rialto Bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits.
She climbed their crooked tree and I . . . A saint couldn’t resist it.
The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?

{Staggering Bob, a whitepolled calj, thrusts a ruminating head with
humid nostrils through the joliage.)

STAGGERING BOB

Me. Me see.

BLOOM

Simply satisfying a need. {With pathos.) No girl would when I
went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn’t play . . .

{High on Ben Howth through rhododendrons a nannygoat passes,
plumpuddered, buttytailed, dropping currants.)

520

THE NANNYGOAT

{Bleats.) Mcgegaggcgg! Nannannanny!

BLOOM

{Hatless, flushed, covered -with burrs oj thistledown and gorsepine.)
Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. {He gazes intently
do-wtrwards on the -water.) Xhirtytwo head over heels per second.
Press nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of govern-
ment printer’s clerk. {Through silversilent summer air the dummy oj
Bloom, rolled in a mummy, rolls rotatingly Jrom the Lions Head elifl
into the purple -waiting -waters.)

THE DOMMYMUMMY

Bbbbblllllbbblblodschbg?

{Bar out in the bay between Bailey and Kish lights the Erin s King
sails, sending a broadening plume oj coalsmoke jrom her junnel
towards the land.)

COUNCILLOR NANNETTI

{Alone on deck, in dark alpaca, yellow kitejaced, his hand in his -waist-
coat opening, declaims.) When my country takes her place among the
nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.
I have . . .

BLOOM

Done. Prff.

THE NYMPH

{Lojtily.) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place
and no hair there either. We are stonccold and pure. We eat electric
light. {She arches her body in lascivious crispation, placing her joreflnger
in her mouth.) Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could
you . .

BLOOM

{Pacing the heather abjectly.) O, I have been a perfect pig. Encnias
too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia, to which add
a tablcspoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton

Long’s syringe, the ladies’ friend.

521

THE NYMPH

In niy presence. The powderpufF. {S/ie blushes and makes a knee.)
And the rest.

BLOOM

[Dejected.) Yes. Peccavi! I have paid homage on that living altar
where the back changes name. [With sudden Jervour.) For why
should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules . . .?

[Figures 'wind serpenting in slcno woodland pattern around the
treestemsy cooeeing.)

THE VOICE or KITTY

[In the thicket.) Show us one of them cushions.

Here.

THE VOICE OF FLORRY

[A grouse wings clumsily through the underwood.)

THE VOICE OF LYNCH

[In the thicket.) Whew! Piping hot)

THE VOICE OF 20E

[From the thicket.) Came from a hot place.

THE VOICE OF VIRAG

[AbirdchieJ, bluestreaked and feathered in war panoply imth his assegai^
striding through a crackling canebrake over beechmast and acorns.)
Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!

BLOOM

It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to
sit where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as
though to grant the last favours, most especially with previously well
uplifted white sateen coatpans. So womanly full. It fills me full.

522

THE WATERFALL

Phiilaphulla Pouiaphouca
Poulaphouca Pouiaphouca.

Ssh! Sister, speak!

THE YEWS

THE NYMPH

{EyeUsSj in nun's •white habit, coij and huge -winged -wimple, softly,
•with remote eyes f Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel,
the apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. {She reclines
her head, sighing.) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull
waves o’er the waters dull.

{Bloom half rises. His back trousers' button snaps.)

THE BUTTON

Bipl

{Tw sluts of the Coombe dance rainily by, shawled, yelling flatly.)

THE SLUTS

O Leopold lost the pin of his drawers
He didn't know what to do,

To keep it up.

To keep it up.

BLOOM

{Coldly.) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were
only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy
but willing, like an ass pissing.

THE YEWS

{Their sil-verfoil of leaves precipitating, their skinny arms ageing and
swaying.) Deciduously!

THE NYMPH

Sacrilege I To attempt my virtue! {A large moist stain appears on
her robe.) Sully my innocencel You arc not 6t to touch the garment

523

of a pure woman. (S^e clutches in her robe.) Wait, Satan. You’ll
sing no more.lovcsongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. {She draws
a poniard and., clad in the sheathmail oj an elected knight oj nine., strikes
at his loins.) N'ckum!

BLOOM

{Starts up, seizes her hand.) Hoy! Ncbrakada! Cat of nine lives!
Fair play, madam. No pruning knife. The fox and the grapes, is it?
What do we lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough?
{He clutches her veil.) A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame
gardener, or the spoutless statue of the watercarrier or good Mother
Alphonsus, eh Reynard?

THE NYMPH

{H’ith a cry, flees jrom him unveiled, her plaster cast cracking, a
cloud oj stench escaping jrom the cracks.) Poli . . .!

BLOOM

{Calls after her.) As if you didn’t get it on the double yourselves.
No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it. Your strength
our weakness. What’s our studfee? What will you pay on the nail?
You fee men dancers on the Riviera, I read. {The fleeing nymph
raises a keen.) Eh! I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind
me. And would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh?
f'ool someone else, not me. {He snifls.) But. Onions. Stale. Sulphur.
Grease.

{The figure oj Bella Cohen stands bejore him.)

BELLA

You’ll know me the next time.

BLOOM

{Composed, regards her.) Passee. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long
in the tooth and superfluous hairs. A raw onion the last thing at
night would benefit your complexion. And take some double chin
drill. Your eyes are as vapid as the glass eyes of your stuffed fox.
They have the dimensions of your other features, that’s all. I’m not
a triple screw propeller.

524

BELLA

(ConUmptuou!ly.) You’re not game, in fact. (Her ,ov^unt barks.)
Fohracht!

BLOOM

(Contemptuously.) Clean your naillcss middle finger first, the raid
spunk of your bully is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful
of hay and wipe yourself.

BELLA

I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!

BLOOM

I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vcndorl

BELLA

{Turns to the piano.) Which of you was playing the dead march from
Saul?

ZOE

Me. Mind your cornflowers. {She dartf to the piano and hangs chords
on it with crossed arms.) The cat's ramble through the slag. {She
olances back.) Eh.^ Who’s making love to my sweeties? (We darts
back to the table.) What’s yours is mine and what s mine is my own.

{Kitty disconcerted coats her teeth with the silver paper. Bloom
approaches Zoe.)

BLOOM

{Gently.) Give me back that potato, will you?

ZOE

Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.

BLOOM

{With jeeling.) It is nothing, but still a relic of poor mamma,

525

ZOE

Give a thing and take it back
God'll ask you where is that
You’ll say you don’t know
God’ll send you down below.

BLOOM

There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.

STEPHEN

To have or not to have, that is the question.

ZOE

Here. [She hauls up a reef of her slip, revealing her bare thigh and
unrolls the potato from the top of her stocking.) Those that hides knows
where to find.

BELLA

{Frowns.) Here. This isn’t a musical peepshow. And don’t you
smash that piano. Who’s paying here.^

{She goes to the pianola. Stephen fumbles in his pocket and, taking
out a banknote by its corner, hands it to her.)

STEPHEN

{With exaggerated politeness.) This silken purse I made out of the
sow’s ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. {He
indicates vaguely Lynch and Bloom.) We are all in the same sweepstake,
Kinch and Lynch. Dans ce bordel ou tenons nostre btat.

LYNCH

{Calls from the hearth.) Dedalus! Give her your blessing for me.

STEPHEN

{Hands Bella a coin.) Gold. She has it.

BELLA

{Looks at the money, then at Zoe, Florrie and Kitty.) Do you want
three girls.^ It’s ten shillings here.

526

STEPHEN

(Delightedly.) A hundred thousand apologies. {He jumbles again and
takes out and hands her t-wo crowns.) Permit, brevi manu, my sight is

somewhat troubled.

{Bella goes to the table to count the money while Stephen talks to
himselj in monosyllables. Zoe bounds irver to the table. Kitty leans
over Zoe's neck. Lynch gets up, rights his cap and, clasping Kitty s
waist, adds his head to the group.)

fLORRY

{Strives heavily to rise.) Owl My foot’s asleep. {She limps over to the
table. Bloom approaches.)

BELLA, ZOE, KITTY, LYNCH, BLOOM
{Chattering and squabbling.) The gentleman . . . ten shillings . . .
paving for the three . . . allow me a moment . . . this gentleman pays
separate . . . who’s touching it? . . . ow . . . mind who you re pinch-
ing .. . are you staying the night or a short time? . . . who did. . . .
you’re a liar, excuse me . . . the gentleman paid down like a gentle-
man . • • drink . • . it's long after eleven.

STEPHEN

{At the pianola, making a gesture oj abhorrence.) No bottles! What,

eleven? A riddle.

ZOE

{Lijting up her pettigown and jolding a half sovereign into the top oj
her stocking.) Hard earned on the flat of my back.

LYNCH

{Lifting Kitty from the table.) Come!

KITTY

Wait. {She clutches the two crowns.)

FLORRY

And me?

527

LYNCH

Hoopla! {He lijts her, carries her and bumps her down on the soja.)

STEPHEN

The fox crew, the cocks flew,

The bells in heaven
Were striking eleven.

'Tis time for her poor soul
To get out of heaven.

BLOOM

{Quietly lays a halj sovereign on the table between Bella and Blorry.')
So. Allow me. {He takes up the poundnote.) Three times ten. We’re
square.

BELLA

{Admiringly.') You’re such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.

ZOE

{Points.) Hum? Deep as a drawwcll. {Lynch bends Kitty back over
the soja and kisses her. Bloom goes with the poundnote to Stephen.)

BLOOM

This is yours.

STEPHEN

How is that? Le distrait or absentminded beggar. {He jumbles again
in his pocket and draws out a handjul oj coins. An object jails ^ That

BLOOM

{Stooping, picks up and hands a box oj matches.) This.

STEPHEN

Lucifer. Thanks.

BLOOM

{Quietly.) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of.
Why pay more?

528

STEPHEN

{Hands him all hts coins.) Be just before you arc generous.

BLOOM

I will but is it wise? {He counts.) One, seven, eleven, and 6vc. Six.
Eleven. I don’t answer for what you may have lost.

STEPHEN

Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next
Lessing says. Thirsty fox. {He laughs loudly.) Burying his grand-
mother. Probably he killed her.

BLOOM

That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.

STEPHEN

Doesn’t matter a rambling damn.

BLOOM

No, but . . .

STEPHEN

{Contes to the table.) Cigarette, please. {Lynch tosses a cigarette Jrom
the sofa to the table.) And so Georgina Johnson is dead and marned.
{A cigarette appears on the table. Stephen looks at it.) Wonder.
Parlour magic. Married. Yisn. {He strikes a match and proceeds
to light the cigarette with enigmatic melancholy.)

LYNCH

{Watching him.) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you
held the match nearer.

STEPHEN

{Brings the match nearer his eye.) Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke
them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sew all flat.
{He draws the match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks. Near: far.

Ineluctable modaUty of the visible. {He Jrowns mysteriously.) Hm.

Sphinx. The beast that has two backs at midnight. Mamed.

529

Z0£

It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.

FLORRY

{Nods.) Mr Lambe from London.

STEPHEN

Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.

LYNCH

(Embracing Kitty on the soja, chants deeply.) Dona nobis pacem. .

{The cigarette slips jrom Stephen's fingers. Bloom picks it up and
throws it into the grate.)

BLOOM

Don t smoke. You ought to cat. Cursed dog I met. {To Zoe.) You
have nothing?

ZOE

Is he hungry?

STEPHEN

{Extends his hand to her smiling and chants to the air oj the bloodoath
in the Dusk of the Gods.)

Hangende Hunger,

Fragende Frau,

Macht uns alle kaput.

ZOE

{Tragically.) Hamlet, I am thy father’s gimlctl {She takes hts hand.)
Blue eye d beauty. I’ll read your hand. {She points to hit Jorehead.)
No wit, no wrinWes. {She counts.) Two, three, Mars, that’s courage.
{Stephen shakes his head.) No kid.

LYNCH

Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake.
{To Zoe.) Who taught you palmistry?

530

ZOE

(Turns.) Ask my ballocks that I haven’t got. {To Stephen.) I see it
in your face. The eye, like that. {She jroums utth Icnzered head.)

LVSCH

{Laughing, slaps Kitty behind fwice.) Like that. Pandy bat.

{Twice loudly a pandyUt cracks, the coffin oj the pianola fltes open,
the bald little round jack-in-the-box head oJ Father Dolan springs

up.)

FATHER DOLAN

Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer.
See it in your eye.

{Mild, benign, rectorial, reproving, the head oJ Don John Conmee
rises from the pianola coffin.)

DON JOHN CONMEE

Now, Father Dolan! Now. I’m sure that Stephen is a very good little
boy.

ZOE

{Examining Stephens palm.) Woman’s hand.

STEPHEN

{Murmurs.) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read
His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.

What day were you born?
Thursday. Today.

ZOE

STEPHEN

ZOE

Thursday’s child has far to go. {She traces lines on his hand.)
of fate. Influential friends.

Line

FLORRY

{Pointing.) Imagination.

53 ‘

ZOE

Mount of the moon. You’ll meet with a . . . {SAe peers at his hands
abruptly.) I won’t tell you what’s not good for you. Or do you want
to know?

BLOOM

{Detaches her Jingers and o^ers his palm.) More harm than good.
Here. Read mine.

BELLA

Show. {She turns up Bloom's hand.) I thought so. Knobby knuckles,
for the women.

ZOE

{Peering at Bloom's palm.) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and
marry money.

BLOOM

Wrong.

ZOE

{Quickly.) O, I sec. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That
wrong?

{Black Liz, a huge rooster hatching in a chalked circle, rises, stretches
her •wings and clucks.)

BLACK LIZ

Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.

{She sidles Jrom her newlaid egg and •waddles o£.)

BLOOM

{Points to his hand.) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it
twenty-two years ago. I was sixteen.

ZOE

I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.

532

STEPHEN

See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo too Sixteen years
ago I twentytwo tumbled, twcntylwo years ago he sixteen td
off his hobbyhorse. {He •winces.) Hurt my hand somewhere. -Must

see a dentist. Money?

iZoc whispers to Florry. They giggle. Bloom releases his hand and
writes idly on the table in backhand^ pencilling slow curoes.)

FLORRY

What?

{A hackneycar, number three hundred and twentyjour, with a
\allantbuttocked mare, driven by James Barton, Harmony Avenue
Donnybrook, trots past. Blazes Boylan and Lenehan sprawl
swaying on the sideseats. The Ormond boots crouches behnd on
the axle. Sadly over the crossblind Lydia Douce and Mina Kennedy

gaze.)

THE BOOTS

{Jogging, mocks them with thumb and wriggling warmongers.) Haw
haw, have you the horn?

{Bronze by gold they whisper.)

ZOE

{To Florry.) Whisper.

{They whisper again.)

{Over lie well oj the car Blazes Boylan learn, his

set sideways, a red flower in his nwuth Lenehan, sn

cap and white shoes, officiously detaches a long ha,r from Blazes

Boylan' s shoulder.)

LENEHAN

Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off
a few quims?

BOYLAN

{Seated, smiles.) Plucking a turkey.

533

A good night’s work.

LENEHAN

BOYLAN

{Holding up jour thick bluntungulated fingers, winks.) Blazes Kate!
Up to sample or your money back. (He holds out a forefinger.) Smell
that.

LENEHAN

[Smells gleefully.) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!

ZOE AND FLORRY

[Laugh together.) Ha ha ha ha.

BOYLAN

[Jumps surely from the car and calls loudly for all to hear.) Hello,
Bloom! Mrs Bloom up yet?

BLOOM

[In a flunkey's plum plush coat and kneebreeches, bufi stockings and
powdered wig.) I’m afraid not, sir, the last articles , . .

BOYLAN

[Tosses him sixpence.) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. [He
hangs his hat smartly on a peg of Bloom's antlered head.) Show me in.
I have a little private business with your wife. You understand?

BLOOM

Thank you, sir. Yes, sir, Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.

MARION

He ought to feel himself highly honoured. [She plops splashing out
of the water.) Raoul, darling, come and dry tnc. I’m in my pelt.
Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.

BOYLAN

[A merry twinkle in his eye.) Topping!

534

BELLA

What? What is it?

(Zoe Vihispers to her.)

MARION

Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I'll
write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded w’oman,
to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me
back a signed and stamped receipt.

BELLA

[Laughing.) Ho ho ho ho.

BOYLAN

{To Bloom, over his shoulder.) You can apply your eye to the keyhole
and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.

BLOOM

Thank you, sir, I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness
the deed and take a snapshot? {He holds an ointment jar.) Vaseline,
sir? Orangeflower? . . . Lukewarm water? . . .

KITTY

{From the soja.) Tell us, Florry. Tell us. What.

{Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur Uplapptng
loudly, poppysmic plopslop.)

MINA KENNEDY

{Her eyes upturned.) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and
lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her! Stuck together!
Covered with kisses!

LYDIA DOUCE

{Her mouth opening.) Yumyum. O, he’s carrying her round the room
doing itl Ride a cock horse. You could hear them in Pans and
New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.

535

{Laughing.) "Hee hec hec.

KITTY

boylan’s voice

{Sweetly y hoarsely ^ in the pit oj his stomach.) Ah! Gooblazqruk
brukarchkrashti

Marion’s voice

{Hoarsely^ sweetly rising to her throat.) O! Wceshwashtkissimapoo-
isthnapoohuck!

BLOOM

{His eyes wildly dilated^ clasps himselj.) Show! Hide! Show! Plough
her! More! Shoot!

BELLA, ZOE, FLORRY, KITTY

Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!

LYNCH

{Points.) The mirror up to nature. {He laughs.) Hu hu hu hu hu hu.

{Stephen and Bloom gaze in the mirror. The jace oj William
ShakespearCy beardlesSy appears Mere, rigid in facial paralysisy
crowned by the reflection oj the reindeer antlered hatrack in the
hall.)

SHAKESPEARE

{In dignified ventriloquy.) ’Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant
mind. {To Bloom.) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible.
Gaze. {He crows with a black capon's laugh.) lagogo! How my
Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymomun. lagogogo!

BLOOM

{Smiles yellowly at the whores.) When will I hear the joke?

ZOE

Before you’re twice married and once a widower.

536

BLOOM

Lapses arc condoned. Even the great Napoleon, when measure'
ments were taken near the skin after his death . . .

{M.rs Dignam, widow woman,, her snubnose and cheeks flushed
with deathtalk, tears and Tunny's tawny sherry, hurries by in
her weeds, her bonnet awry, rouging and powdering her cheeks,
tips and nose, a pen chivvying her brood oj cygnets. Beneath her
skirt appear her late husband's everyday trousers and turnedup
boots, large eights. She holds a Scottish widow's insurance policy
and large marqueeumbrella under which her brood runs with her,
Patsy hopping on one short Joot, his collar loose, a hank oj pork-
steaks dangling, Freddy whimpering, Susy with a crying cod s
mouth, Alice struggling with the baby. She cufls them on, her
streamers flaunting aloft.)

FREDDY

Ah, ma, you’re dragging me along!

SUSY

Mamma, the bceftca is fizzing over!

SHAKESPEARE

{fpith paralytic rage.) Weda seca whokilla farst.

(The face oj Martin Cunningham, bearded, rejeatures Shakespeare's
beardless jace. The marqueeumhrella sways drunkenly, the children
run aside. Under the umbrella appears Mrs Cunningham tn
Merry Widerw hat and kimono gown. She glides sidling and bowing,

twisting Japanesily.)

MRS CUNNINGHAM

{Sings.)

And they call me the jewel of Asia.

MARTIN CUNNINGHAM

{Gazes on her impassive.) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!

537

STEPHEN

Et exaltabuntur cornua iusti. Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember
Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfathcr made the first
confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine
scions of the house of Lambert. And Noah was drunk, with wine.
And his ark was open.

BELLA

None of that here. Come to the wxong shop.

LYNCH

Let him alone. He’s back from Paris.

ZOE

(Runs to Stephen and links him.') O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.

(Stephen claps hat on head and leaps over to the fireplace^ cohere
he stands with shrugged shoulders. Jinny hands outspread, a painted
smile on his face.)

LYNCH

(Pommelling on the soja.) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmmm.

STEPHEN

(Gabbles, with marionette jerks.) Thousand places of entertainment
to expenses your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other
things perhaps her heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very
eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses
like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra
foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how
much smart they arc on things love and sensations voluptuous.
Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show
with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night.
Perfectly shocking terrific of religion’s things mockery seen in uni-
versal world. All chic womans which arrive full of modesty then
disrobe and squeal loud to sec vampire man debauch nun very fresh
young with dessous troublants. (He clacks his tongue loudly.) Ho,
la la! Ce pij qu'il a! s J J

538

Vivf U vampird

LYNCH

THE WHORES

Bravo! Parleyvoo!

STEPHEN

{Grimacing with head back, laughs loudly, clapping himself*) Great
success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles
big damn ruffians. DenumonJainds nicely handsome sparkling of
diamonds very amiable costumed. Or do you arc fond better what
belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? (He points
about him with grotesque gestures which Lynch and the whores reply to.)
Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesizc tompeeptoms virgins
nudities very l«bic the kiss five ten times. Enter gentlemen to sec in
mirrors every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also
if desire act awfully bestial butcher’s boy pollutes in warm veal liver
or omelette on the belly piece de Shakespeare.

BELLA

(Clapping her belly, sinks back on the soja with a shout oj laughter.)
An omelette on the . . . Ho! ho! ho! ho! . . . Omelette on the . . .

STEPHEN

(Mincingly.) I love you. Sir darling. Speak you cnglishman tongue
for double entente cordiale. O yes, mon loup. How much cost? Water-
loo. Watcrclosct. (He ceases suddenly and holds up a jorejinger.)

BELLA

(Laughing.) Omelette . . .

THE WHORES

(Laughing.) Encore! Encore!

STEPHEN

Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.

ZOE

Go abroad and love a foreign lady.

539

Across the world for a wife.

LYNCH

Dreams go by contraries.

FLORRV

STEPHEN

{Extending hts arm.) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine
Avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where’s the red
carpet spread?

BLOOM

{Approaching Stephen.) Look. . . .

STEPHEN

No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without
end. {He cries.) Pater! Free!

BLOONT

I say, look . . .

STEPHEN

Break my spirit, will he? O merde alorsl {He cries, his vulture talons
sharpened.) Hola! Hillyhol

{Simon Dedalus' voice hilloes in answer, somewhat sleepy but ready.)

SIMON

That’s all right. {He swoops uncertainly through the air, wheeling,
uttering cries oj heartening, on strong ponderous buzzard vAngs.) Ho,
boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschattl Stable with those
halfcastes. Wouldn’t let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up!
Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed.
Ulster king at arms! hai hoop! {He makes the beagle's call giving
tongue.) Bulbul! Burblblbrurblbl! Hai, boy!

{The jronds and spaces oj the wallpaper Jile rapidly across country.

A stout Jox drawn jrom covert, brush pointed, having buried his
grandmother, runs swijt jor the open, brighteyed, seeking badger

540

earth, under the leaves. The pack oj staghounds jollows, nose to
the ground, sniffing their quarry, beaglebaying, burblbrbltng to be
blooded. Ward Union huntsmen and huntrwomen live with them,
hot for a kill. From Six Mile Point, Flathouse, Nine Mile Stone
follow the jootpeople with knotty sticks, salmongafs, lassos, flock-
masters with stockwhips, bearbaiters with tomtoms, toreadors with
bullswords, grey negroes waving torchet. The crowd bawls oJ dicers,
crown and anchor players, thimblcrtggers, broadsmen. Crews and
touts, hoarse bookies in high wizard hats clamour deajeningly.)

THE CROWD

Card of the races. Racing card!

Ten to one the field!

Tommy on the clay here! Tommy on the clay!

Ten to one bar one. Ten to one bar one.

Try your luck on spinning Jenny!

Ten to one bar one!

Sell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!

ril give ten to onel

Ten to one bar one!

(A dark horse, riderless, bolts like a phantom past the winningpost,
his mane moonjoaming, his eyeballs stars. The fleld jollows, a bunch
of bucking mounts. Skeleton horses: Sceptre, Maximum the Second,
Zinfandel, the Duke oJ Westminsters Shotover, Repulse, the Duke
of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris. Dwarjs ride them, rusty
armoured, leaping, leaping in their saddles. Last tn a drtz^e of
rain, on a broken^nded isabelle nag. Cock oj (he North, the
favourite, honey cap, green jacket, orange sleeves. Garrett Deasy
up, gripping the reins, a hockey stick at the ready. Hts nag, stumbling
on whitegaitered feet, jogs along the rocky road.)

THE ORANGE LODGES

{Jeering.), Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You’ll be home the
night !

GARRETT DEASY

{Bolt upright, his natlscraped face plastered with postage stamps,
brandishes his hockeystick, his blue eyes flashing in the prism of the
chandelier as his mount lopes by at schooling gallop.)

54 *

Per X'ias rectus!

{A yoke oj buckets leopards all over him and his rearing nag, a torrent
of mutton broth with dancing coins oJ carrots, barley, onions, turnips,
potatoes.')

THE GREEN LODGES

Soft daVv sir John! Soft day, your honour!

{Private Carr, Private Compton and Cissy Cajfrey pass beneath
the windows, singing in discord.

STEPHEN

Hark! Our friend, noise in the street!

ZOE

{Holds up her hand.) Stop!

PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON and CISSY CAFFREY

Yet I've a sort a
Yorkshire relish for . . .

ZOE

That’s me. {She claps her hands.) Dance! Dance! {She runs to the
pianola.) Who has twopence?

BLOOM

Who’ll . . .

LYNCH

{Handing her coins.) Here.

STEPHEN

{Cracking his Jingers impatiently.) Quick! Quick! Where’s my
augur’s rod? {He runs to the piano and takes his ashplant,. beating his
joot in tripudium.)

ZOE

{Turns the drumhandle.) There.

{She drops two pennies in the slot. Gold pink and violet lights
start jorth. The drum turns purring in low hesitation waltz.

542

Projessor Goodvnn\ in a b(ywknotted periuig, in court dress, rearing
a stained Inverness cape, bent in two Jrom incredible age, totters
across the room, his hands fluttering. He sits tinily on the piano
stool and lijts and beats handless sticks of arms on the keyboard,
nodding "with damsel's grace, his bovcknot bobbing.)

ZOE

{Twirls around her selj, heeltapping.) Dance. Anybody here for there?

Who'll dance?

{Jhe pianola, with changing lights, plays in waltz time the prelude
oj My Girl’s a Yorkshire Girl. Stephen throws his ashplant
on the table and seizes Zoe around the waist. Florry and Bella
push the table towards the flreplace. Stephen, arming Zoe with
exaggerated grace, begins to waltz her around the room. Her
sleeve, Jailing Jrom gracing arms, reveals a white fleshflower oJ
vaccination. Bloom stands aside. Between the curtains, Projessor
Maginni inserts a leg on the toepoint oJ which spins a silk hat.
IVith a dejt kick, he sends it spinning to his crown and jauntyhatted
skates in. He wears a slate Jrockcoat with claret silk lapels, a
gorget oJ cream tulle, a green lowcut waistcoat, stock collar with
white kerchiej, tight lavender trousers, patent pumps and canary
gloves. In his buttonhole is a dahlia. He twirls in reversed directions
a clouded cane, then wedges it tight in his oxter. He places a hand
limply on his breastbone, bows and Jondles his flower and buttons.)

MAGINNI

The poetry of motion, art of callisthenics. No connection with
Madam Legget Byrne’s or Lcvinstonc’s. Fancy dress balls arranged.
Deportment. The Katty Lanncr steps. So. Watch me! My terp-
sichorean abilities. {He minuets Jorward three paces on tripping bee s

Jeet.) Tout le monde en avanti RFubrence! Tout le monde en placet

{JThe prelude ceases. Projessor Goodwin, beating vague arms,
shrivels, shrinks, his live cape Jailing about the stool. The air,
in flrmer waltz time, pounds. Stephen and Zoe circle Jreely. The
lights change, glow. Jade, gold, rose, violet.)

THE PIANOLA

Two young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls.
Sweethearts they’d left behind . . .

543

(From a corner the morning hours run out, goldhaired, sUm, in
girlish blue, •waspwaisted, icith innocent hands. Nimbly they dance,
twirling their skipping ropes. The hours oj noon Jollow in amber
gold. Laughing linked, high haircombs flashing, they catch the sun
in mocking mirrors, lijting their arms.)

MAGINNI

(Clipclaps glovesilent hands.) Carrb! Avant deux! Breathe evenly!
Balance!

(The morning and noon hours waltz, in their places, turning,
advancing to each other, shaping their curves, bowing vis h vis.
Cavaliers behind them arch and suspend their arms, with hands
descending to, touching, rising jrom their shoulders.)

HOURS

You may touch my . . .

CAVALIERS

May I touch your?

HOURS

O, but lightly!

CAVALIERS

O, SO lightly!

THE PIANOLA

My little shy little lass has a waist,

(Zoe and Stephen turn boldly with looser swing. The twilight
hours advance, from long landshadows, dispersed, lagpng, languid^
eyed, their cheeks delicate with cifria and false faint bloom. They
are in grey gauze with dark bat sleeves that flutter in the land
breeze.)

MAGINNI

Avant! huit! Traversb ! Salut! Cours de mains! Croisb!

(The night hours steal to the last place. Morning, noon and twilight
hours retreat before them. They are masked, with daggered hair and
bracelets of dull bells. W eary, they curchycurchy under veils^

544

Heigho! Hcigho!

THE BRACELETS

ZOE

(T'U'isting, her hand to her hrow.) O!

MAOISM

Les tiroirs! Cha’ine de dames' La corbeillel Dos d dos!

{Arahesquing •wearily^ they "weave a pattern on the jioor^ -weaving,
unweaving, curtseying, twisting, simply ruirhng.)

ZOE

I'm giddy.

(She frees herself, droops on a chair, Stephen seizes Florry and
turns with her.)

^ MAGINNI

Boulanger/) Les ronds! Les pontsl Chevaux de hois! Kscargots!

(Twining, receding, with interchanging hands, the night hours link,
each with arching arms, in a mosaic of movements. Stephen and
Florry turn cumbrously.)

MAGINNI

Dansez avec vos dames! Changez de dames! Donnez le petit bouquet
d votre dame! Remerciez!

THE PIANOLA

Best, best of a)l,

Baraabum!

KITTY

(fumps up.) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus
bazaar!

(She runs to Stephen. He leaves Florry brusquely and seizes Kitty.

A screaming bittern's harsh high whistle shrieks. Groangrouse-
gurgling Toft's cumbersome whirligig turns slowly the room right
roundabout the room.)

S4S

2N

THE PIANOLA

My girl’s a Yorkshire girl.

TiOE

Come on all!

Yorkshire through and through.
(SAe seizes Florry and waltzes her.')

STEPHEN

Pas seul!

{He wheels Kitty into Lynch's arms^ snatches up his ashplant
jrom the table and takes the floor. All wheels whirls waltz, twirl.
Bloombella, Kittylynch, Florryzoe, jujuby women. Stephen with
hat ashplant jrogsplits in middle highkicks with skykicldng mouth
shut hand clasp part under thigh, with clang tinkle boomhammer
tallyho hornblower blue green yellow flashes. Toft's cumbersome
turns with hobbyhorse riders Jrom fflded snakes dangled, bowels
fandango leaping spurn soil foot and fall again.)

THE PIANOLA

Though she’s a factory lass
And wears no fancy clothes.

{Closeclutched swift swifter with glareblareflare scudding they
scotlootshoot lumbering by. Baraabum!)

TUTTI

Encore 1 Bisl Bravo! Encore!

SIMON

Think of your mother’s people!

STEPHEN

Dance of death.

{Bang fresh barang bang of lacquey's bell, horse, nag, steer,
piglings, Conmee on Christass lame crutch and leg sailor in cock-

546

boat armjolded ropepulitng hitching stamp hornpipe through and
through, Baraabum! On nags, hogs, bellhorses, Gadarene swine.
Corny in co£in. Steel shark stone onehandleJ Selson, ttco trickies
Frauenzimmer plumstamed from pram jailing bawling. Gum,
he’s a champion. Fuseblue peer jrom barrel rev. evensong Love
on hackney jaunt Blazes blind coddoubled bicyclers Lilly with
snowcake no jancy clothes. Then in last wiswitchback lumbering
up and down bump mashtub sort of liceroy and reine relish jor
tublumber bumpshire rose. Baraabum!)

{The couples jail aside. Stephen whirls giddily. Room whirls
back. Lyes closed, he totters. Red rails Jiy spacewards. Stars
all around suns turn roundabout. Bright midges dance on wall.

He stops dead.)

STEPHEN

Ho!

{Stephen’s mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor m
leper grey with a wreath oj jaded orange blossoms and a torn
bridal veil, her jace worn and noseless, gfeen with grave TWiuld.
Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eye-
sockets on Stephen and ooens her toothless mouth uttering a silent
word. A choir oj virgins and confessors sing voicelessly.)

THE CHOIR

Liliata rutilantium te coafcssorun) . . .
lubilantium tc virginum . . .

{From the top oj a ttmer Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester s
dress oj puce and yellow and clowns cap with curling bell, stands
gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)

BUCK MULLIGAN

She’s beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted
mother. {He upturns his eyes.) Mercurial Malachi.

THE MOTHER

{With the subtle smile oj death's madness.) I was once the bcautdul
May Goulding. I am dead.

547

STEPHEN

[Horrorstruck.) Lemur, who arc you? What bogeyman’s trick is
this?

BUCK MULLIGAN

{Shakes his curling capbelL) The mockery of it! Kinch killed her
dogsbody bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. {Tears oj molten butter
jalljrom his eyes into the scone.) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa
ponton.

THE MOTHER

{Comes nearer, breathing upon him sojtly her breath of wetted ashes.)
All must go through it, Stephen. More women than men in the
world. You too. Time will come,

STEPHEN

{Choking with fright, remorse and horror.) They said I killed you,
mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.

THE MOTHER

{A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth.) You sang that
song to me. Love's bitter mystery.

STEPHEN

{Eagerly.) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word
known to all men.

THE MOTHER

Who. saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkcy with
Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the
st^rangers.? Prayer is all powerful. Prayer for the suffering soSs in
the Ursuline manual, and forty days’ indulgence. Repent, Stephen.

STEPHEN

The ghoul! Hyena!

THE MOTHER

I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boUed
nee every night after your brain work. Years and years I loved you,
O my son, my fimborn, when you lay in my womb,

548

ZOE

{Fanning herselj 'with the grate Jan.) I’m melting!

FLORRY

{Points to Stephen.) Look! He’s white.

BLOOM

{Goes to the window to open it more.) Giddy.

THE MOTHER

{With smouldering eyes.) Repent! O, the fire of hell!

STEPHEN

{Panting.) The corpscchcwcrl Raw head and bloody bones!

THE MOTHER

{Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath.)
Beware! {She raises her blackened, withered right arm slowly towards
Stephens breast with outstretched fingers.) Beware! God’s hand!
{A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in
Stephen s heart.)

STEPHEN

{Strangled with rage.) Shite! {His jeatures grow drawn and grey
and old.)

BLOOM

{At the window.) What?

STEPHEN

Ah non, par exemplel The intellectual imagination! With me all or
not at all. Hon serviaml

FLORRY

Give him some cold water. Wait. {She rushes out.)

549

THE MOTHER

{Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately.) O Sacred Heart of
Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O divine Sacred
Heart!

STEPHEN

No! No! No! Break my spirit all of you if you can! I’ll bring you
all to heel!

THE MOTHER

{In the agony oj her deathrattle.) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for
my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love,
grief and agony on Mount Calvary.

STEPHEN

Nothung!

{He lijts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the chand-
delier. Time s livid Jinal flame leaps and, in the following darkness,
ruin oJ all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.)

Pwfungg!

Stop!

THE GASJET
BLOOM

LYNCH

{Rushes Jorward and seizes Stephen s hand.) Here! Hold on! Don’t
run amok!

BELLA

Police!

{Stephen, abandoning his ashplant, his head and arms thrown back
stark, beats the ground and flees from the room past the whores at
the door.)

BELLA

{Screams.) After him!

{The two whores rush to the halldoors. Lynch and Kitty and
Zoe stampede from the room. They talk excitedly. Bloom follows,
returns.)

550

THE WHORES

{yammed in the doorway, pointing.) Down there.

ZOE

(Pointing.) There. There’s something up.

BELLA

Who p8ys for the lamp? (She seizes Bloom's coattail^ There. You
were wiA him. The lamp’s broken.

BLOOM

(Rushes to the hall, rushes back.) What lamp, woman?

He tore his coat.

A WHORE

BELLA

(Her eyes hard with anger and cupidity, points.) Who’s to pay for
that? Ten shillings. You’re a witness.

BLOOM

(Snatches up Stephen's ashplant.) Me? Ten shillings? Haven’t you
Ufted enough off him? Didn’t he . . .1

' BELLA

(Loudly.) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn’t a brothel. A ten
shilling house.

BLOOM

(His hand under the lamp, pulls the chain. Pulling, the gasjet lights
up a crushed mauve purple shade. He raises the ashplant.) Only the
chimney’s broken. Here is all he . . .

BELLA

(Shrinks back and screams.) JesusI Don’tl

55 *

BLOOM

{Warding a blow.) To show you how he hit the paper. There’s
not a sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!

FLORRY

{With a glass of water, enters.) Where is he?

BELLA

Do you want me to call the police?

BLOOM

O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he’s a Trinity student.
Patrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. {He
makes a masonic sign.) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vice-
chancellor. You don’t want a scandal.

BELLA

{Angrily.) Trinity! Coming down here ragging after the boat races
and paying nothing. Arc you my commander here? Where is he?
I’ll charge him. Disgrace him, I will. {She shouts.) Zoel Zoc!

BLOOM

{Urgently.) And if it were your own son in Oxford! {Warnsngly.)
I know.

BELLA

{Almost speechless.) Wlio arc you incog?

ZOE

{In the doorway.) There’s a row on.

BLOOM

What? Where? {He throws a shilling on the table and shouts^ That’s
for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air,

{He hurries out through the hall. The whores point. Florry
follows, spilling water from her tilted tumbler. On the doorstep

552

all the -whores clustered talk volubly, pointing to the right where
the Jog has cleared of. From the left arrives a jingling hackney
car. It slows to in front oj the house. Bloom at the halldoor perceives
Corny Kelleher who is about to dismount from the car with two
silent lechers. He averts his face. Bella from within the hall
urges on her whores. They blow ickylickysticky yumyum kisses.
Corny Kelleher replies with a ghostly lewd smile. The silent lechers
turn to pay the jarvey. Zoe and Kitty still point right. Bloom,
parting them swiftly, draws his caliph's hood and poncho and
hurries down the steps with sideways face. Incog Haroun al Raschid,
he flits behind the silent lechers and hastens on by the railings with
fleet step of a pard strewing the drag behind him, torn envelopes
drenched in aniseed. The ashplant marks his stride. A pack of
bloodhounds, led by Hornblower of Trinity brandishing a do^vhip
in tallyho cap and an old pair of grey trousers, follows from far,
picking up the scent, nearer, baying, panting, at fault, breaking
away, throwing their tongues, biting his heels, leaping at hts tail.
He walks, runs, zigzags, gallops, lugs laid back. He is pelted
with gravel, cabbagestumps, biscuitboxes, eggs, potatoes, dead
codfish, womans slipperslappers. After him, freshfound, the hue

and cry zigzag gallops in hot pursuit of follow my leader: 65 C 66 C

night watch, John Henry Menton, Wisdom Hely, K. B. Dillon,
Councillor Nannetti, Alexander Keyes, Larry O Rourke, Joe Cufe,
Mrs O'Dowd, Pisser Burke, The Nameless One, Mrs Riordan,
The Citizen, Garryowen, Whatdoyoucallhim, Strangeface, Fellow-
thatslike, Sawhimbefore, Chapwith, Chris CalUnan, sir Charles
Cameron, Benjamin Dollard, Lenehan, Bartell d'Arcy, foe Hynes,
red Murray, editor Brayden, T. M. Healy, Mr Justice Fitzgibbon,
John Howard Parnell, the reverend Tinned Salmon, Professor Joly,
Mrs Breen, Denis Breen, Theodore Purefoy, Mina Purefoy, the
IVestland Row postmistress, C. P. M'Coy, friend of Lyons, Hoppy
Holohan, man in the street, other man in the street, Footballboots,
pugnosed driver, rich protestant lady, Davy Byrne, Mrs Ellen
M' Guinness, Mrs Joe Gallaher, George Lidwell, Jimmy Henry
on corns. Superintendent Laracy, Father Cowley, Crofton out of the
Collector General's, Dan Dawson, dental surgeon Bloom with
tweezers, Mrs Bob Doran, Mrs Kenneflck, Mrs Wyse Nolan, John

kVyse Nolan, handsomemarriedwomanrubbedagainstwidebehmdtn-

Clonskeatram, the bookseller of Sweets of Sin, Miss Dubedatand-

553

shedidbedad, Mesdames Gerald and Stanislaus Moran of Roebuck,
the managing clerk of Drimmie's, colonel Hayes, Mastiansky, Citron,
Penrose, Aaron Figatner, Moses Herzog, Michael E. Geraghty,
Inspector Troy, Mrs Galbraith, the constable of Eccles Street
corner, old doctor Brady with stethoscope, the mystery man on the
beach, a retriever, Mrs Miriam Dandrade and all her lovers.)

THE HUE AND CRY

{Helterskelterpelterwelter.) He’s Bloom! Stop Bloom! Stopabloom!
Stoppcrrobber! Hi! Hi! Stop him on the corner!

{At the corner of Beaver Street beneath the scaffolding Bloom
panting stops on the fringe of the noisy quarrelling knot, a lot not
knowing a jot what hi! hi! row and wrangle round the whowhat
bravjlaltogether . )

STEPHEN

{With elaborate gestures, breathing deeply and slmoly.) You are my
guests. The uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh
of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.

PRIVATE CARR

{To Cissy Cafrey.) Was he insulting you.^

STEPHEN

Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.

VOICES

No, he didn’t. The girl’s telling lies. He was in Mrs Cohen’s.
What's up? Soldiers and civilians.

CISSY CAFFREY

I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do— you
know and the young man ran up behind me. But I’m faithful to the
man that’s treating me though I’m only a shilling whore.

STEPHEN

{Catches sight of Kitty's and Lynch's heads.) Hail, Sisyphus. (He
points to himself and the others.) Poetic. Neopoetic.

554

She’s faithfultheman.

VOICES

CISSY CAFFREY

Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.

PRIVATE COMPTON

He doesn’t half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Harry.

PRIVATE CARR

{To Cissy.) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?

LORD TENNYSON

{In Union Jack blazer and cricket flannels, bareheaded, flowingbearded.)
Their’s not to reason why.

Biff him, Harry.

PRIVATE COMPTON

STEPHEN

{To Private Compton.) I don’t know your name but you arc quite
right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in
their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole.

CISSY CAFFREY

{To the crowd.) No, I was with the private.

STEPHEN

{Amiably.) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every
lady for example . . .

PRIVATE CARR

{His cap awryy advancing to Stephen.) Say, how would it be, governor,
if I was to bash in your jaw?

STEPHEN

{Looks up in the sky.) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of self-
pretence. Personally, I detest action. {He waves his hand.) Hand

555

hurts me slightly. Enjin, ce sont vos oignons. {To Cissy Cagrey.)
Some trouble is on here. What is it, precisely?

DOLLY GRAY

{From her balcony waves her handkerchsej^ the sign of the heroine

9.f y^fitho.) Rahab. Cook’s son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly.
Dream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you.

{The soldiers turn their swimming eyes.)

BLOOM

{Elbowing through the crowdy plucks Stephen s sleeve vigorously.) Come
now, professor, that carman is waiting.

STEPHEN

{Turns.) Eh? {He disengages himselj.) Why should I not speak to
him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate
orange? {He points his finger.) I’m not afraid of what I can talk to
if I sec his eye. Retaining the perpendicular.

{He staggers a pace back.)

BLOOM

{Propping him.) Retain your own.

STEPHEN

{Laughs emptily.) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten
the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life
is the law of existence but modern philirenists, notably the tsar and
the king of England, have invented arbitration. {He taps his brow.)
But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king.

BIDDY THE CLAP

Did you hear what the professor said? He’s a professor out of the
college.

CUNTY KATE

I did. I heard that.

556

BIDDY THE CLAP

He expresses himself with much marked refinement ot phraseology.

CUNTY KATE

Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.

PRIVATE CARR

[Pulls h 'tmselj jree and comes joricard.) What’s that you're saying
about my king?

[Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white
jersey on which an image oj the Sacred Heart is stitchedy with
the insignia oJ Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, EJephant oJ
Denmark, Sldnner's and Prnbyns horse, Lincolns Inn bencher
and ancient and honourable artillery company oj Massachusetts.

He sucks a red jujube. He is robed as a grand elect perject and
sublime mason with trowel and apron, marked made in Germany.

In his lejt hand he holds a plasterer s bucket on which is printed:
Defense d’urincr. A roar oj welcome greets him.')

EDWARD THE SEVENTH

[Slowly, solemnly but indistinctly.) Peace, perfect peace. For identifica-
tion bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. [He turns to his subjects.)
We have come here to w'itncss a clean straight fight and we licartily
wish both men the best of good luck. Mah^ makar a back.

[He shakes hands with Private Carr, Private Compton, Stephen,
Bloom and Lynch. General applause. EJward the Seventh lijts
the bucket graciously in acknowledgement.)

PRIVATE CARI^

[To Stephen.) Say it again.

STEPHEN

[Nervous, jriendly, pulls himselj up.) I understand your point ot
view, though I have no king myself for the moment. 1 his is the age
of patent medicine. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is
the point. You die for your country, suppose. [He places his arm

557

on Private Carr sleeve.) Not that I wish it for you. But I say:
Let my country die for me. Up to the present it has done so. I don’t
want It to die. Damn death. Long live life!

EDWARD THE SEVENTH

{^vitates over heaps oj slain in the garb and with the halo of Joking
Jesusy a white jujube in his phosphorescent face. )y

My methods are new and are causing surprise.

To make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.

STEPHEN

Kinp and unicorns! {He falls back a pace.) Come somewhere and
we II . . . What was that girl saying? . . .

PRIVATE COMPTON

Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.

BLOOM

{To the privates, softly.) He doesn’t know what he’s saying. Taking
a little rnorc than is good for him. Absinthe, the greencyed monster.
I know him. He’s a gentleman, a poet. It’s all right.

STEPHEN

{^odsy smiling and laughing.) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge
or impostors. ^ ®

PRIVATE CARR.

I don’t give a bugger who he is.

PRIVATE COMPTON

We don’t give a bugger who he is.

STEPHEN

I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.

{Kevin Egan of Paris in black Spanish tasselled shirt and peep-
o -day boy s hat signs to Stephen.)

558

KEVIN EGAN

HUo. Bonjour! The xieilU ogresse with the dents jaunes.

(^Patrice pgan peeps jrom behind^ his rabbit jace nibbling a quince
leaf.)

PATRICE

Socia/isfe!

DON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY
(In medieval hauberk^ two wild geese volant on his helm, with noble
indignation points a mailed hand against the privates.') Werf those
eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnycllows todos covered
of gravy!

BLOOM

(To Stephen.) Come home. You'll get into trouble.

STEPHEN

(Swaying.) I don’t avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.

BIDDY THE CLAP

One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.

THE VIRAGO

Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.

THE BAWD

The red’s as good as the green, and better. Up the soldiers! Up
King Edward]

A ROUGH

(Laughs.) Ayl Hands up to De Wet.

THE CITIZEN

(With a huge emerald mufler and shillelagh, calls.)

May the God above

Send down a cove

With teeth as sharp as razors

To slit the throat

Of the English dogs

That hanged our Irish leaders.

559

THE CROPPY BOY

{The rope noose round his neck, gripes in his issuing bowels with both
hands.)

I bear no hate to a living thing,

But love my country beyond the king.

RUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER

{Accompanied by two blackmasked assistants, advances with a gladstone
bag which he opens.) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs
Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the
wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the
unfortunate female’s throat being cut from ear to car. Phial containing
arsenic retrieved from the body of Miss Barrow which sent Seddon
to the gallows.

{He jerks the rope, the assistants leap at the victim's legs and drag
him downward, grunting: the croppy boy's tongue protrudes violently.)

THE CROPPY BOV
Horhot ho hray ho rhother’s best.

{He gives up the ghost. A violent erection of the hanged sends
gouts oj sperm spouting through his death clothes on to the cobble-
stones. Mrs Bellingham, Mrs Yelverton Barry and the Honourable

Mrs Mervyn Talboys rush forward with their handkerchiefs to sop

it up.)

RUMBOLD

I m near it myself. {He undoes the noose.) Rope which hanged the
awful rebel. Ten shillings a time as applied to His Royal Highness.
{He plunges his head into the gaping belly of the hanged and draws
out his head again clotted with coiled and smoking entrails.) My painful
duty has now been done. God save the king!

EDWARD THE SEVENTH

{Dances slowly, solemnly, rattling his bucket and sings with soft con-
tentment.)

On coronation day, on coronation day,

O, won't we have a merry time,

Drinking whisky, beer and wine!

560

PRIVATE CARR

Here. What arc you saying about my king?

STEPHEN

{Throws up his hands.) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He
wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for
some brutish empire of his. Money I haven’t. {He searches his pockets
vaguely.) Gave it to someone.

PRIVATE CARR

Who wants your bleeding money?

STEPHEN

{Tries to move o^.) Will some one tell me where I am least likely
to meet these necessary evils? (^a se voit aussi a Paris. Not that I . . .
But by Saint Patrick! . . .

{The women's heads coalesce. Old Gummy Granny in sugarloaj hat
appears seated on a toadstool^ the deathjiower of the potato blight
on her breast.)

STEPHEN

Aha! I know you, grammcrl Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that
cats her farrow!

OLD GUMMY GRANNY

{Rocking to andjro.) Ireland’s sweetheart, the king of Spain’s daughter,
alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them! {She keens
with banshee woe.) Ochonel Ochone! Silk of the kine! {She waits.)
You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand?

STEPHEN

How do I stand you? The hat tricki Where’s the third person of the
Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.

CISSY CAPPREY

{Shrill.) Stop them from fighting!

S6i

20

Our men retreated.

A ROUGH

PRIVATE CARR

^ 1 • I ril wring the neck of any bugger says a word
against my fucking king.

BLOOM

(Terrijie^.) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.

THE CITIZEN

Erin go 6ragh!

{Major Tweedy and the Citizen exhibit to each other medals^ decorations,
trophies oj war, wounds. Both salute with fierce hostility.)

PRIVATE COMPTON

Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He’s a probocr.

STEPHEN

Did I? When?

BLOOM

{To the redcoats.) We fought for you in South Africa. Irish fnissUc

troops. Isn t that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by
our monarch. ■'

THE NAVVY

{Staggering past.) O. yes. O. God, yes! O, make the kwawr a
krowaWrl O! Bo!

{Casqued halberdiers in armour thrust forward a pentice of gutted
spear points. Major Tweedy, moustached like Turko the terrible,
w bearskin cap with hackle plume and accoutrements, with epaulette,
gilt chevrons and sabretache, his breast bright with medals, toes the
line. He gives the pilgrim warrior's sign of the knights templars.)

{Growls gruffly.)
shalal hashbaz.

MAJOR TWEEDY

Rorkes DriftI Up, guards, and at them! Mahal

562

PRIVATE CARR

I’ll do him in.

PRIVATE COMPTON

{IFaves the crowd hack.) Fair play, here. .Make a bleeding butcher's
shop of the bugger.

{Massed hands hlare Garryowen and God save the king.)

CISSY CAFFREY

They’re going to fight. For me!

CONTY K.^TE

The brave and the fair.

BIDDY THE CLAP

Melhinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.

CUNTY KATE

{Blushing deeply.) Nay, Madam. The gules doublet and merry
Saint George for me!

STEPHEN

The harlot's cry from street to street
Shall weave old Ireland’s windingshect.

PRIVATE CARR

{Loosening his belt, shouts.) I’ll wring the neck of any fucking bastard
says a word against my bleeding fucking king.

BLOOM

{Shakes Cissy Carrey's shoulders.) Speak, you! Arc you struck dumb?
You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman,
sacred lifegivcr.

Cissy CAFFREY

{Alarmed, seizes Private Carrs sleeve.) Amn’t I with you? Amn’t
I your girl? Cissy’s your girl. {She cries.) Police!

563

STEPHEN

{Ecstatically^ to Cissy Cafrey.)

White thy fambles, red thy gan
And thy quarrons dainty is.

VOICES

Police!

DISTANT VOICES

Dublin’s burning! Dublin’s burning! On fire, on fire!

{Brimstone fres spring up. Dense clouds roll past. He <ruy Gatling
guns boom. Pandemonium. Troops deploy. Gallop of hoofs,
^ttllery. Hoarse commands. Bells clang. Backers shout.
Drunkards ba-H. Whores screech. Foghorns hoot. Cries of valour,
hhneks oj dying. Pikes clash on cuirasses. Thieves rob the slain.
Birds of prey, winging from the sea, rising from marshlands,
swooping from eyries, hover screaming, gannets, cormorants, vultures,
goshawks, climbing woodcocks, peregrines, merlins, blackgrouse,
sea eagles, gulls, albatrosses, barnacle geese. The midnight sun is
<i^rkened. The earth trembles. The dead of Dublin from Prospect
and Mount Jerome in white sheepskin overcoats and black goatfell
cloaks arise and appear to many. A chasm opens with a noiseless
yawn. Tom Rochford, winner in athlete's singlet and breeches,
arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into
the void. He is followed by a race of runners and leapers. In wild
attitudes they spring from the brink. Their bodies plunge. Factory
lasses. with fancy clothes toss redhot Torkshire baraabombs. Society
ladies lift their skirts above their heads to protect themselves.
Laughing witches in red cutty sarks ride through the air on broom-
^tteks. Quakerlyster plasters blisters. It rains dragon's teeth.
Armed heroes spring up from furrows. They exchange in amity
Me pass of knights of the red cross and fight duels with cavalry sabres:
Wolfe fgf^tnst Henry Grattan, Smith O'Brien against Daniel

0 Connell, Michael Davitt against Isaac Butt, Justin McCarthy
<^gftnst Parnell, Arthur Griffith against John Redmond, John

ary against Lear O Johnny, Lord Edward Fitzgerald against
P^Iward, The O'Donoghue of the Glens against

1 he Glens of The Donoghue. On an eminence, the centre of the earth.

rises the field altar oj Saint Barbara. Black candles rise from Us
gospel and epistle horns. From the high barbicans oj the tower /w
shajts oj light jail on the smokepalled altar stone. On the altarstone
Mrs Mina Purejoy, goddess oj unreason, lies naked, jettered, a
chalice resting on her swollen belly. Father Malacht O Flynn, in a
long petticoat and reversed chasuble, his tico lejt feet back to t e
jront, celebrates camp mass. The Reverend Mr Hugh C. Haines
Love M. A. in a plain cassock and mortar board, his head and
collar back to the jront, holds over the celebrant's head an open

umbrella.^

FATHER MALACHl o’ FLYNN
Introibo ad altare diaboli.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE
To the devil which hath made glad my young days.

FATHER MALACHl o’fLYNN

{Takes jrom the chalice and elevates a blooddripping host.) Corpus
Meum.

THE REVEREND MR HAINES LOVE

{Raises high behind the celebrant's petticoats, revealing his grey bare
hairy buttocks between which a carrot is stuck.) My body.

THE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMNED

Htcngicr Tnetopinmo Dog Drol clu rof, Aiulcllal

{From on high the voice oj Adonai calU.)

A DONA I

Dooooooooooog !

THE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED

Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent rcigneth!

{jFrom on high the voice oj Adonai calls.)

ADONAI

Goooooooooood !

565

[In strident discord peasants and townsmen oj Orange and Green
factions sing Kick the Pope and Daily, daily sing to Mary.)

PRIVATE CARR

{With ferocious articulation.) I’ll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!
I II wring the bastard fucker’s bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!

OLD GUMMY GRANNY

Stephen's hand.) Remove him, acushla.
At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free. {She
prays.) O good God, take him!

BLOOM

{Runs to Lynch.) Can’t you get him aw'ay?

LYNCH

He likes dialectic, the universal language. Kitty! {To Bloom.) Get
him away, you. He won’t listen to me.

{He drags Kitty away.)

STEPHEN

{Points.) Exit Judas. Et laqueo se suspendit,

BLOOM

{Runs to Stephen.) Come along with me now before worse happens.
Here s your stick.

STEPHEN

Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.

CISSY CAFFKEY

Private Carr.) Come on, you’re boosed. He insulted me
buj I forgive him. {Shouting in his ear.) I forgive him for insulting

BLOOM

{Over Stephen's shoulder.) Yes. go. You sec he’s incapable.

566

PRIVATE CARR

{Breaks loose.) I’ll insult him.

{He rushes towards Stephesty Jists outstretchedy and strikes him in
the face. Stephen totters, collapses, falls stunned. He lies prone,
his face to the sky, his hat rolling to the wall. Bloom follows and
picks it up.)

MAJOR TWEEDY

{Loudly.) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!

THE RETRIEVER

{Barking furiously.) Utc ute utc utc utc utc ute ute.

THE CROWD

Let him up! Don’t strike him when he’s down! Air! Who? The
soldier hit him. He’s a professor. Is he hurted? Don’t manhandle
him! He’s fainted!

{The retriever, nosing on the fringe of the crowd, harks noisily.)

A HAG

What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the
influence? Let them go and fight the Boers!

THE BAWD

Listen to who’s talking! Hasn’t the soldier a right to go with his girl?
He gave him the coward’s blow.

{They grab at each other's hair, claw at each other and spit.)

THE RETRIEVER

{Barking.) Wow wow wow.

BLOOM

{Shmses them hack, loudly.) Get back, stand back!

PRIVATE COMPTON

{Tugging his comrade.) Here bugger off, Harry. There’s the cops!
{Two raincaped watch, tall, stand in the group.)

567

What’s wrong here?

FIRST WATCH

PRIVATE COMPTON

We were with this lady and he insulted us and assaulted my chum.
{The retriever harks.) Who owns the bleeding tykc.>

CISSY CAFFREY

{IVith expectation.) Is he bleeding?

A MAN

(Rising Jrom his knees.) No. Gone off. He’ll come to all right.

BLOOM

(Glances sharply at the man.) Leave him to me. I can easily . . .

SECOND WATCH

Who arc you? Do you know him?

PRIVATE CARR

(iMrches towards the watch.) He insulted my lady friend.

BLOOM

(Angrily.) You hit him without provocation. I’m a witness. Constable,
take his regimental number.

SECOND WATCH

I don t want your instructions in the discharge of my duty.

PRIVATE COMPTON

(Pulling his comrade.) Here, bugger off, Harry. Or Bcnnett’ll have
you in the lockup.

PRIVATE CARR

(Staggering as he is pulled away.) God fuck old Bennett! He’s a
whitearscd bugger. I don’t give a shit for him.

568

FIRST WATCH

{Taking out his notebook.') What’s his name?

BLOOM

{Peering over the crov:d.) I just sec a car there. If you give me a
hand a second, sergeant . . .

FIRST WATCH

Name and address.

{Corny Kelleher, "weepers round his hat, a death "wreath in his hand,
appears among the bystanders.)

BLOOM

{Quickly.) O, the very man! {He whispers.) Simon Dedalus' son.
A bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.

SECOND WATCH

Night, Mr Kellchcr.

CORNY KELLEHER

{To the "watch, "with dra'wTing eye.) That’s all right. I know him.
Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. {He laughs.) Twenty
to one. Do you follow me?

FIRST WATCH

{Turns to the crowd.) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on
out of that.

{The crowd disperses slowly, muttering, down the lane.)

CORNY KELLEHER

Leave it to me, sergeant. That’ll be all right. {He laughs, shaking
his head.) We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse. What? Eh,
what?

FIRST WATCH

{Laughs.) I suppose so.

569

CORNY KELLEHER

{Nudges the second -watch.) Come and wipe your name off the slate.
{He lilts, nagging his head.) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom
tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?

SECOND WATCH

{Genially.) Ah, sure we were too.

CORNY KELLEHER

{Winking.) Boys will be boys. I’ve a car round there.

SECOND WATCH

All right, Mr Kclleher. Good night.

CORNY KELLEHER

I'll sec to that.

BLOOM

{Shakes hands with both oj the watch in turn.) Thank you very much,
gentlemen, thank you. {He mumbles confidentially.) We don’t want
any scandal, you understand. Father is a well known, highly respected
citizen. Just a little wild oats, you understand.

FIRST WATCH

O, I understand, sir.

SECOND WATCH

That’s all right, sir.

FIRST WATCH

It was only in case of corporal injuries I’d have had to report it at
the station.

BLOOM

{Nods rapidly.) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.

SECOND WATCH

It’s our duty.

570

Good night, men.

COHNY KELLEHtR

THE WATCH

{Saluting together.) Night, gentlemen. {They mne oj nith slo-p he<ny
tread.)

BLOOM

{Blaus.) Providenti.ll you came on the s.ccne. You have a car? . . .

CORNY KEI.LFHF.R

{Laughs, pointing his thumb over his right shoulder to the car brought
up against the sca^oldtng.) I wo commercials* that were standing fizz
in Jammci’s. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the
race. Drowning his grief and were on for a go with the jolly girls.
So I landed them up on Behan’s car and down to nighttown.

BLOOM

I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to . . .

CORNY KELLEHF-R

{Laughs.) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots. No, by
God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. {He laughs
again and leers 'with lacklustre eye.) Thanks be to God we have it in
the house what, ch, do you follow me? Hah! hah! hah!

BLOOM

{Tries to laugh.) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting
an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don’t know him (poor fellow
he’s laid up for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I
was just making my way home . . .

{The horse neighs.)

THE HORSE

Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!

57 «

CORNY KELLEHER

>urc i( ’A;is Hchan, our jarvey there, that told me after we left the
two commercials in Mrs Cohen’s and I told him to pull up and got off
to see. {He laughs.) Sober hearscdrivers a speciality. Will I give
him a lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra,
what?

BLOOM

No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.

{Stephen, prone, breathes to the stars. Corny Kelleher, asquint,
draivls at the horse. Bloom in gloom, looms dovsn.)

CORNY KELLEHER

{Scratches his nape.) Sandycove! {He bends down and calls to Stephen^
Eh! {He calls again.) Eh! He’s covered with shavings anyhow.
Take care they didn’t lift anything off him.

BLOOM

No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.

CORNY KELLEHER

Ah well, he’ll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I’ll shove along.
{He laughs.) I’ve a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead.
Safe home!

THE HORSE

{N eighs. ) Hohohohohome.

BLOOM

Good night. I’ll just wait and take him along in a few . . .

(Corny Kelleher returns to the outside car and mounts it. The horse
harness jingles.)

CORNY KELLEHER

{From the car, standing.) Night.

BLOOM

Night.

572

{The Jarvey chucks the reins and raises his 'whip encouragingly.

The car and horse back slcewly, a-wkwardly and turn.

Kelleher on the sideseat ncays his head to and Jro in sign oj mirth
at Bloom's plight. The jarvey joins in the mute pantoimmic merri-
ment nodding from the farther seat. Bloom shakes his head m mute
mirthful reply. With thumb and palm Corny Kelleher reassures
that the tiDO bobbies will allrrw the sleep to continue for what else is
to be done. With a slow nod Bloom conveys his gratitude as that is
exactly what Stephen needs. The car jingles tooraloom round the
corner of the tooraloom lane. Corny Kelleher again reassuraloom
with his hand. Bloom with his hand assuralooms Corny Kelleher
that he is reassuraloomtay. The tinkling hoofs and jingling harness
j^ow fainter with their tooralooloolooloo lay. Bloom, holding in his
hand Stephen's hat festooned with shavings and ashplant, ^{^s
irresolute. Then he bends to him and shakes him by the shoulder.)

BLOOM

Eh! Ho! (There is no answer; he bends again.) Mr Dcdalus!

is no answer.) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (He bends
again and, hesitating, brings hit mouth near the face of the prostrate
form.) Stephen! (There is no answer. He calls again.) Stephen.

STEPHEN

(Groans.) Who? Black panther vampire. (He sighs and stretches
himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vvwels.)

Who . . . drive . . . Fergus now.

And pierce . . . wood’s woven shade? . . .

(He turns on his left side, sighing, doubling himself together.)

BLOOM

Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (H, ag,2in arJ unJot, the butum

of Stlticn-s oooisuoal.) To breathe. (Hr brusbos the wood thmiwgt
from Sttphtn't doth,, with light hand: aod fingers.) One pound seven.
Not hurt anyhow. (Hr listens.) What!

STEPHEN

(Murmurs.)

' ... shadows ... the woods.

. . . white breast . . . dim . .

573

{He stretches out his armsy sighs again anti curls his body. Bloom
holding his hat and ashplant stands erect. A dog barks in the
distance. Bloom tightens and loosens his grip on the ashplant. He
looks doum on Stephen s Jace and jorm.)

BLOOM

{Communes with the night.) Face reminds me of his poor mother.
In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I
caught. A girl. Some girl. Best thing could happen him . . .
{He murmurs.) . . . swear that I w'ill always hail, ever conceal, never
reveal, any part or parts, art or arts . . . {He murmurs.) in the rough
sands of the sea ... a cablctow’s length from the shore . . . where
the tide ebbs . . . and flows . . .

{Silenty thoughtjuly alerty he stands on guardy his fingers at his
lips in the attitude oj secret master. Against the dark wall a figure
appears slowly, a jairy boy oj eleven, a changeling, kidnapped,
dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes and a little bronze helmet,
holding a book in his hand. He reads jrom right to lejt inaudibly,
smiling, kissing the page.)

BLOOM

{Wonderstruck, calls inaudibly.) Rudy!

RUDY

{Gazes unseeing into Bloom's eyes and goes on reading, kissing,

smiling. He has a delicate mauve jace. On his suit he has diamond

and ruby buttons. In his jree lejt hand he holds a slim ivory cane

with a violet bowknot. A white lambkin peeps out of his waistcoat
pocket.)

574

Ill

PREPARATORY TO ANYTHING ELSE MR BLOOM BRUSHED OFF THF

greater bulk of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant
and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion, \.nich he
very badly needed. His (Stephen’s) mind was not ex-ctly what you
would call wandering but a bit unsteady and on his expressed desire
for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom, in view of the hour it was and
there being no pumps of Vartry water available for their ablutions, let
alone drinking purposes, hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off the
reel, the propriety of the cabman’s shelter, as it was called, hardly a
stoncsthrow aw-ay near Butt Bridge, where they might hit upon some
drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. But how to get
there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inas-
much as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures
on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which
Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could sec he was rather pale
in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a con-
veyance of some description which would answer in their then condi-
tion, both of them being e. d. ed, particularly Stephen, always
assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly, after
a few such preliminaries, as, in spite of his having forgotten to take
up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service
in the shaving line, brushing, they both walked together along Beaver
street, or, more properly, lane, as far as the farrier’s and the distinctly
fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery
street where they made tracks to the left from thence debouching into
Amiens Street round by the corner of Dan Bergin’s. But, as he
confidently anticipated, there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire
anywhere to be seen except a fourwheclcr, probably engaged by some
fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star Hotel and there was
no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who
was anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by
emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head,

twice.

This was a quandary but, bringing commonsense to bear on it,
evidently there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter
and foot it which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by
Mullet’s and the Signal House, which they shortly reached, they

575

proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street railway terminus,
Mr Bloom being handicapped by the circumstance that one of the
back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, gone
the way of all buttons, though, entering thoroughly into the spirit of
the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance. So, as neither
ot them were particularly pressed for time, as it happened, and the
temperature refreshing since it cleared up after the recent visitation of
Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by where the empty vehicle
was waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin
United Tramways Company’s sandstrewer happening to be returning
the elder man recounted to his companion a propos of the incident his
own truly miraculous escape of some little while back. They passed the
main entrance of the Great Northern railway station, the starting point
for Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at that late hour,
and, passing the back door of the morgue (a not very enticing locality,
not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at night), ultimately
gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street,
famous for its C division police station. Between this point and the
high, at present unlit, warehouses of Beresford Place Stephen thought
to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird’s, the stonecutter’s, in his mind
somehow' in Talbot Place, first turning on the right, while the other,
w'ho was acting as his Jidus Achates^ inhaled with internal satisfaction
the smell of James Rourke’s city bakery, situated quite close to where
they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all
commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable.
Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread?
At Rourke’s the baker’s, it is said.

En route, to his taciturn, and, not to put too fine a point on it, not
yet perfectly sober companion, Mr Bloom, who at all events, was in
complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly
sober, spoke a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, women of
ill fame and sw^ll mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while,
though not as a habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular death-
trap for young fellow’s of his age particularly if they had acquired
drinking habits under the influence of liquor unless you knew a little
juijitsu for every contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back
could administer a nasti^ kick if you didn’t look out. Highly provi-
dential was the appcar^mce on the scene of Corny Kellehcr when
Stephen was blissfully unconscious that, but for that man in the gap

turning up at the eleventh hour, the finis might have been that he
might have been a canoidatc for the accident ward, or, failing that,
the Bridewell and an appearance in the court next day before Mr
Tobias, or, he being the solicitor, rather old Wall, he meant to say,
or Malony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got bruited
about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of those
policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous
in the service of the Crown and, as Mr Bloom put it, recalling a case
or two in the A Division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole
through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet
parts of the city, Pembroke Road, for example, the guardians of the
law were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to
protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was
equipping soldiers with firearms or sidcarms of any description, liable
to go off at any time, which was tantamount to inciting them against
civilians should by any chance they fall out over anything. You
frittered away your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health
and also character besides which the squandermania of the thing, fast
women of the demimonde ran away with a lot of s. d. into the bargain
and the greatest danger of all was w'ho you got drunk with though,
touching the much vexed question of stimulants, he relished a glass of
choice old w'ine in season as both nourishing and blood-making and
possessing aperient virtues (notably a good burgundy which he w'as
a staunch believer in) still never beyond a certain point where he
invariably drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round to say
nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others practically. Most
of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Stephen by all his
pubhunting conjrires but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the
part of his brother medicos under all the circs.

And that one was Judas, said Stephen, who up to then had said

nothing whatsoever of any kind.

Discussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the
back of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge when
a brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox, or something like
one, attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Stephen of his own accord
stopped for no special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones
and by the light emanating from the brazier he could just make out
the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of
the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened, or had

577

been mentioned as having happened, before but it cost him no small
edort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a
c]iJondam friend of his fathers, Oumlcy. Xo avoid a meeting he
drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.

— Someone saluted you, Mr Bloom said.

A figure of middle height on the prowl, evidently, under the arches
saluted again, calling: Night! Stephen, of course, started rather
dizzily and stopped to return the compliment. Mr Bloom, actuated
by motives of inherent delicacy, inasmuch as he always believed in
minding his own business, moved off but nevertheless remained on the
rjui vive with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish in the least.
Although unusual in the Dublin area, he knew that it was not by any
means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on
to be about waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians
by placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot outside the city
proper, famished loiterers of the Thames embankment category they
might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp
with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment’s
notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral,
gagged and garotted.

Stephen, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters,
though he w-as not in any over sober state himself, recognised Corley’s
breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord John Corley, some called
him, and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son
of Inspector Corley of the G Division, lately deceased, who had
married a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer.
His grandfather, Patrick Michael Corley, of New Ross, had married
the widow of a publican there w'hose maiden name had been Katherine
(also) Talbot. Rumour had it, though not proved, that she descended
from the house of the Lords Talbot de Malahide in whose mansion,
really an unquestionably fine residence of its kind and well worth
seeing, his mother or aunt or some relative had enjoyed the distinction
of being in service in the washkitchen. This, therefore, was the reason
why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who now
addressed Stephen was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as
Lord John Corley.

Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to
tell. Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night’s lodgings. His
friends had all deserted him. Furthermore, he had a row with

578

Lcnehan and called him to Stephen a mean bloody 5>\vab with a
sprinkling of other uncalled-for expression. He was out ot a job and
implored of Stephen to tell him where on God’s earth he could get
something, anything at all to do. No, it was the daughter of the mother
in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or else
they were connected through the mother m some way, both occur-
rences happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn’t a complete
fabrication Irom start to finish. .Anyhow, he was all in.

I wouldn’t ask you, only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and

God knows I’m on the rocks.

—There’ll be a job tomorrow or the next day, Stephen told him, in
a boys’ school at Dalkcy for a gentleman usher. .Mr. Garrett Deasy.

I ry it. You may mention my name.

—Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn’t teach in a school, man.

I was never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. Cot
stuck twice in the junior at the Christian Brothers.

— I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.

Corley, at the first go-off, was inclined to suspect it was something
to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody
tart off the street. 'I here was a dosshouse in Marlborough street,
.Mrs Maloney’s, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables
but .M’Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Bra/cn
Head over in Wineiavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the
person addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though
he hadn’t said a word about it.

Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near
It still Stephen’s feelings got the better of him in a sense though he
knew that Corley’s brandnew rigmarole, on a par with the others,
was hardly deserving of much credence. However, baud ignarus
malorum miierit luccurrtre disco, etcetera, as the Latin poet remarks,
especially as luck would have it he got paid his screw after every middle
of the month on the sixteenth which was the date of the month as a
matter of fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished.
But the cream of the joke was nothing would get it out of Corley’s
head that he was living in affluence and hadn’t a thing to do but
hand out the needful— whereas. He put hU hand in a pocket anyhow,
not with the idea of finding any food there, but thinking he might lend
him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at all
cvenu and get sufficient to eat. But the rault was in the negative for,

579

to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were
all the result ot his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for
the inoincni whether he had lost, as well he might have, or left, because
in tliat contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the
re\erse, in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a
thorough search though he tried to recollect about biscuits he dimly
remembered. Who now exactly gave them, or where w’as, or did he
buy.^ However, in another pocket he came across w'hat he surmised in
the dark were pennies, erroneously, however, as it turned out.

— Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.

And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen lent him
one of them.

— Thanks, Corley answered. You’re a gentleman. I’ll pay you
back some time. Who s that with you? I saw him a few times in the
Bleeding Horse in Camden street with Boylan the billsticker. You
might put in a good word for us to get me taken on there. I’d carry a
sandw’ichboard only the girl in the office told me they’re full up for the
next three weeks, man. God, you’ve to book ahead, man, you’d think
it was for the Carl Rosa. I don’t give a shite anyway so long as I get
a job even as a crossing sweeper.

Subsequently, being not quite so down in the mouth after the two-
and-six he got, he informed Stephen about a fellow by the name of
Bags Comisky that he said Stephen knew well out of Fullam’s, the
shipchandler’s bookkeeper there, that used to be often round in Nagle’s
back w'ith O Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe.
Anyhow, he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a
drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with the constable.

Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of
the cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation
watchman s sentrybox, who, evidently a glutton for work, it struck
him, W’as having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his
own private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the
same time now and then at Stephen’s anything but immaculately
attired interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other
though where he was not in a position to truthfully state nor had he
the remotest idea when. Being a levelheaded individual who could
give points to not a few in point of shrewd observation, he also re-
marked on his very dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing apparel
generally, testifying to a chronic impccuniosity. Probably he was one

ot his hangcrson but for the matter of that it was merely a question
of one preying on his nextdoor neighbour all round, in every deep,
so to put it* a deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the
street chanced to be in the dock himself penal servitude, with or
without the option of a fine, would be a very mra avis altogether. In
any case he had a consummate amount of cool assurance intercepting
people at that hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was
certainly.

The pair parted company and Stephen rejoined Mr Bloom, who,
with his practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had
succumbed to the blandiloqucncc of the other parasite. Alluding to
the encounter he said, laughingly, Stephen, that is:

—He’s down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody
named Boylan, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.

At this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest,
Mr Bloom gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so
in the direction of a bucket dredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name
of Eblana, moored alongside Customhouse Quay and quite possibly
out of repair, whereupon he observed evasively:

— Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you
mention it his face was familiar to me. But leaving that for the
moment, how much did you part with, he queried, if I am not too
inquisitive?

Half-a-crown, Stephen responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep

somewhere.

— Needs, Mr Bloom ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at
the intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he
invariably docs. Everyone according to his needs and everyone accord-
ing to his deeds. But talking about things in general, where, added
he with a smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycovc is
out of the question and, even supposing you did, you won’t get m
after what occurred at Westland Row station. Simply feg out there-
for nothing. I don’t mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest
degree but why did you leave your father’s house?

— To seek misfortune, was Stephen’s answer.

I met your rcspertcd father on a recent occasion, Mr Bloom

diplomatically returned. Today, in fact, or, to be strictly accurate, on
yesterday. Where docs he live at present? I gathered in the course of
conversation thai he had moved.

—I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Stephen answered uncon-
cernedly. Why?

A gifted man, Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in more
respects than one and a born raconteur if ever there was one. He
takes great pride, quite legitimately, out of you. You could go back,
perhaps, he ha2arded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at West-
land Row terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two
Mulligan, that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually
euchred their third companion, W'erc patently trying, as if the whole
bally station belonged to them, to give Stephen the slip in the confusion.

There was no response forthcoming to the suggestion, however,
such as it was, Stephen’s mind’s eye being too busily engaged in
repicturing his family hearth the last time he saw' it, with his sister,
Dilly, sitting by the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some
weak Trinidad shell cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done
so that she and he could drink it with the oatmeal water for milk after
the Friday herrings they had eaten at two a penny, with an egg apiece
for Maggy, Boody and Katey, the cat meanwhile under the mangle
devouring a mess of eggshells and charred fish heads and bones on a
square of brown paper in accordance w-ith the third precept of the
church to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it being quarter
tense or, if not, ember days or something like that.

—No, Mr Bloom repeated again, I wouldn’t personally repose much
trust in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous
clement, Dr. Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I were
in your shoes. He knows which side his bread is buttered on though
in all probability he never realised what it is to be without regular
meals. Of course you didn’t notice as much as I did but it wouldn’t
occasion me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some
narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior object.

He understood, however, from all he heard, that Dr Mulligan was
a versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine only,
who was rapidly coming to the fore in his line and. if the report was
verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant
future as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his
services in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man
from certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first
aid at Skerries, or Malahidc was it? was, he was bound to admit, an
exceedingly plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so

582

that frankly he wa^. utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could
be at the back of it except he put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy,
pure and sintplc.

Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call

picking your brains, he ventured to throw out.

The guarded glance of half solicitude, half curiosity, augmented by
friendliness, which he gave at Stephen’s at present morose expression
of features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact, on the
problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled, to
judge by two or three lowspiritcd remarks he let drop, or, the other
way about, saw through the atiair, and, for some reason or other best
known to himself, allowed matters to more or less . . . Grinding
poverty did have that effect and he more than conjectured that, high
educational abilities though he possessed, he experienced no little

difficulty in making both ends meet.

Adjacent to the men’s public urinal he perceived an icecream car
round which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were
getting rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a
particularly animated way, there being some little differences between

the parties.

Putana madonna^ che ct dia / (juattrinil Ho ragiont? Culo ratio.

— Intendiamoci. Mezzo sovrano piu . . .

— Dice luiy perb.

— Farabutto! Mortacci sui!

Mr Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter, an unpreten-
tious wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely, if ever,
been before; the former having previously whispered to the latter a
few hints anc^t the keeper of it, said to be the once famous Skin-the-
Goat, Fitzharris, the invincible, though he wouldn’t vouch for the
actual facts, which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in.
A few moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a
discreet corner, only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscel-
laneous collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens
of the genus homo^ already there engaged in eating and drinking,
diversified by conversation, for whom they seemingly formed an object

of marked curiosity.

—Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Bloom ventured to plausibly
suggest to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something
in the shape of solid food, say a roll of some description.

583

Accordingly his first act was with characteristic sangjrcid to order
these coiiimodiiics quietly. The hoi polloi of jarvies or stevedores, or
whatever thev'were, after a cursory examination, turned their eyes,
apparently dissatisfied, away, though one redbearded bibulous indivi-
dual, a portion ot whose hair was greyish, a sailor, probably, still
stared for some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention
to the floor.

Mr Bloom, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having
just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute though, to
be sure, rather in a quandary over voglio, remarked to \ns. protege in an
audible tone of voice, apropos of the battle royal in the street which was
still raging fast and furious:

— A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you
not write your poetry in that language.^ Bella Poetria! it is so melo-
dious and full. Belladonna voglio.

Stephen, who w’as trying his dead best to yawn, if he could, suffer-
ing from dead lassitude generally, replied:

— To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.

— Is that so? Mr Bloom asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively,
at the inward reflection of there being more languages to start with
than were absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour
that surrounds it.

The keeper of the shelter in the middle of this t(te-d-tete put a
boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction hbelled colTee on the
table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed,
after which he beat a retreat to his counter. Mr Bloom determining
to have a good square look at him later on so as not to appear to . . .
for which reason he encouraged Stephen to proceed with his eyes
while he did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup of what
was temporarily supposed to be called coff'ec gradually nearer him.

— Sounds arc impostures, Stephen said after a pause of some little
time. Like names, Cicero, Podmorc, Napoleon, Mr Goodbody, Jesus,
Mr Doyle. Shakespeares were as common as Murphies. What’s in a
name?

— Yes, to be sure, Mr Bloom unaflPectedly concurred. Of course.
Our name was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.

The redbearded sailor, who had his weather eye on the newcomers,
boarded Stephen, whom he had singled out for attention in particular,
squarely by asking:

584

— And what might your name be?

Just in the nick of time Mr Bloom touched his companion’s boot
but Stephen, apparently disregarding the warm pressure, from an
unexpected quarter, answered:

— Dcdalus.

The sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes,
rather bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old
Hollands and water.

— You know Simon Dcdalus? he asked at length.

— I've heard of him, Stephen said.

Mr Bloom was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently
eavesdropping too.

— He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the
same way and nodding. All Irish.

— All too Irish, Stephen rejoined.

As for Mr Bloom he could neither make head or tail of the whole
business and he was just asking himself what possible connection when
the sailor, of his own accord, turned to the other occupants of the shelter
with the remark:

— I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his
shoulder. The left hand dead shot.

Though he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and
his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.

— Bottle out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles.
Cocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.

He turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely,
then he screwed his features up some way sideways and glared out into
the night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.

— Pom, he then shouted once.

The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation,
there being still a further egg.

— Pom, he shouted twice.

Egg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding
bloc^thirstily:

— BufaU Bill ihoon lo killy

Never misjed nor he never will.

A silence ensued till Mr Bloom for agrceablcness’ sake just felt like

585

asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the
Bisley.

— Beg pardon, the sailor said.

— Long ago? Mr Bloom pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.

— Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the
magic influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten
years. He toured the wide world with Hengler’s Royal Circus. I
seen him do that in Stockholm.

— Curious coincidence, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen un-
obtrusively.

— Murphy’s my name, the sailor continued, W. B. Murphy, of
Carrigaloe. Know where that is?

— Queenstown Harbour, Stephen replied.

— That’s right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle.
7'hat’s where I hails from. My little woman’s down there. She’s
waiting for me, I know. For Eng/and, home and beauty. She’s my own
true wife I haven’t seen for seven years now, sailing about?

Mr Bloom could easily picture his advent on this scene — the home-
coming to the mariner’s roadside shieling after having diddled Davy
Jones — a rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife.
Quite a number of stories there were on that particular Alice Ben Bolt
topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts
remember Caoc O’Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation
piece, by the way, of poor John Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in
its own small way? Never about the runaway wife coming back,
however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the window!
Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and the
awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his
affections. You little expected me but I’ve come to stay and make a
fresh start. There she sits, a grass widow, at the selfsame fireside.
Believes me dead. Rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits
uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the
Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No
chair for father. Boo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her
knee, post mortem child. With a high rol and a randy rol and my
galloping tearing tandy O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it.
I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband, W. B. Murphy.

The sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to
one of the jarvics with the request:

586

— You don’t happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you,
do you?

The jarvey addressed, as it happened, had not but the keeper took
a die of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired
object was passed from hand to hand.

— Thank you, the sailor said.

He deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing, and with some slow
stammers, proceeded:

— \Vc come up this morning eleven o’clock. The three-master
Rosevean from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid
off this afternoon. There’s my discharge. See? W. B. .Murphy,
A. B. S.

In confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside
pocket and handed to his neighbours a not very cleanlooking folded
document.

— You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked,
leaning on the counter.

— Why, the sailor answered, upon reflection upon it, I’ve circum-
navigated a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in
China and North America and South America. I seen icebergs plenty,
grow’lers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the Dardanelles,
under Captain Dalton the best bloody man that ever scuttled a ship.
I seen Russia. Gospodi pomilooy. That’s how the Russians prays.

— You seen queer sights, don’t be talking, put in a jarvey.

— Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug, I seen
queer things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an
anchor same as I chew that quid.

He took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his
teeth, bit ferociously.

— Khaanl Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that cats
corpses and the livers of horses. Look here. Here they arc. A friend
of mine sent me.

He fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket, which
seemed to be in its way a species of repository, and pushed it along the
table. The printed matter on it staled: Choxa de Indios. Beni, Bolivia.

All focused their attention on the scene exhibited, at a group of
savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling,
frowning, sleeping, amid a swarm of infants (there must have been
quite a score of them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.

587

— Chews coca all day long, the communicative tarpaulin added.
Stomachs like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can’t
bear no more children. See them there stark ballocknakcd eating a
dead horse’s li\er raw.

flis postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns
for several minutes, if not more.

— Know how to keep them off? he inquired genially.

Nobody volunteering a statement, he winked, saying;

— Glass. That boggles ’em. Glass.

Mr Bloom, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over
the card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It
ran as follows; Tarjeta Postal, Senor A. Boudin, Galeria Becche,
Santiago, Chile. There was no message evidently, as he took particular
notice. Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or
the eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the
Lazarillo-Don Cesar dc Bazan incident depicted in Maritana on which
occasion the former’s ball passed through the latter’s hat), having
detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person
he represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after
liaving boxed the compass on the strict q. t. somew’here) and the
fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some
suspicions of our friend’s bona fides, nevertheless it reminded him in a
u ay of a longchcrished plan he meant to one day realise some Wednes-
day or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea not to say that
he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was at
heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had consistently
remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead which was
his longest. Martin Cunningham frequently said he would work a
pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped
up with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose
it did come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd’s heart
it was not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside, con-
sidering the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and
six there and back. The trip would benefit health on account of the
bracing ozone and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially
for a chap whose liver was out of order, seeing the different places along
the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on, culminating
in an instructive tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle
of our modern Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest

588

improvement tower, abbey, wealth of Park Lane to renew acquain-
tance with. Another thing just struck him as a by no means bad notion
was he might have a gaze around on the spot to see about trying to
make arrangements about a concert tour of summer music embracing
the most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and
firstrate hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so
on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots,
which might prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole
and corner scratch company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs
C. P. M‘Coy type — lend me your valise and I’ll post you the ticket.
No, something top notch, an all star Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower
grand opera company with his own legal consort as leading lady as a
sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, per-
fectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of success, providing
puffs in the local papers could be managed by some fellow with a
bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable wires and thus combine
business with pleasure. But who.^ That was the rub.

Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field
was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace
with the times apropos of the Fishguard- Rosslarc route which, it was
mooted, was once more on the tapis in the circumlocution departments
with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom
and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly was
for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public at
large, the average man, i. e. Brown, Robinson and Co.

It was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and
no small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street,
when the system really needed toning up, for a matter of a couple of
paltry pounds, was debarred from seeing more of the world they
lived in instead of being always cooped up since my old stick-in-the-
mud took me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and
more humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of venue
after the grind of city life in the summertime, for choice, when Dame
Nature is at her spectacular best, constituting nothing short of a new
lease of life. There were equally excellent opportunities for vaca-
tionists in the home island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation,
offering a plethora of attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the
system in and around Dublin and its picturesque environs, even,
Poulaphouca, to which there was a steam tram, but also farther away

589

from the madding crowd, in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of
Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen, so long as it
didn’t come down, and in the wilds of Donegal where, if report spoke
true, the coup d'ceil was exceedingly grand, though the lastnamed
locality was not easily getatabic so that the influx of visitors was not
as yet all that it might be considering the signal benefits to be derived
from it, while Howth with its historic associations and otherwise. Silken
I homas, Grace O’Malley, George IV, rhododendrons several hundred
feet above sealcvel was a favourite haunt with all sorts and conditions
of men, especially in the spring when young men’s fancy, though it
had its own toll of deaths by falling off the cliffs by design or acci-
dentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being only about
three quarters of an hour’s run from the pillar. Because of course
uptodatc tourist travelling was as yet merely in its infancy, so to speak,
and the accommodation left much to be desired. Interesting to fathom,
it seemed to him, from a motive of curiosity pure and simple, was
whether it was the traffic that created the route or vice-versa or the
two sides in tact. He turned back the other side of the card picture and
passed it along to Stephen.

— I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had
little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened,
and every pill was something different. One w'as a ship, another was a
house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly
added, the Chinese docs.

Possibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces, the
globetrotter went on adhering to his adventures.

— And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in
his back. Knife like that.

Whilst speaking he produced a dangerous looking claspknife, quite
in keeping with his character, and held it in the striking position.

In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon bctw'ccn two smugglers.
Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. Prepare
to meet your God, says he. Chuck! It went into his back up to the butt.

His heavy glance, drow’sily roaming about, kind of defied their
further questions even should they by any chance want to. That’s a
good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable stiletto.

After which harrowing denouement sufficient to appal the stoutest he
snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before
in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.

590

They’re great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently

quite in the dark said for the benefit of them all. 1 hat was why they
thought the park murders of the invinciblcs was done by foreigners on

account of them using knives.

At this remark, passed obviously in the spirit of ignorance is

bliss, Mr Bloom and Stephen, each in his own particular way, both
instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the
strictly entre nous variety however, towards where Skm-the-Goat, al^s
the keeper, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His
inscrutable face, which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itsclt,
beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn t under-
stand one jot of W'hat was going on. F unny very.

There ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading bv
fits and starts a stained by coffee evening journal; another, the card
with the natives choza de\ another, the seaman’s discharge. Mr Bloom,
so far as he was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive
mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took
place as well as yesterday, some score of years previously, in the days
of the land troubles when it took the civilised world by storm, figur-
atively speaking, early in the eighties, cightyonc to be correct, when
he was just turned fifteen.

— Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.

The request being complied with, he clawed them up w-ilh a scrape.
—Have you seen the Rock of Gibraltar? Mr Bloom inquired.

The sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes,

ay> or no. .

—Ah, you’ve touched there too, Mr Bloom said, Europa point,

thinking he had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some
reminiscences but he failed to do so, simply letting spurt a jet ot spew
into the sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of l^y scorn.

What year would that be about? Mr Bloom interpolated. Can

you recall the boats?

Our soi-disant sailor munched heavily awhile, hungrily, betorc

answering. , .

—I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships.

Salt junk all the lime.

Tired, seemingly, he ceased. His questioner, perceiving that he was
not likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer,

59 *

tell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about
the globe. Suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed.
It covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly
what it meant, to rule the waves. On more than one occasion — a dozen
at the lowest — near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a
superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the
not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obviously at it
and it at him, dreaming of fresli woods and pastures new as someone
somewhere sings. And it lett him wondering why. Possibly he had
tried to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the
antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and under — well, not
exactly under — tempting the fates. And the odds were twenty to nil
there w'as really no secret about it at all: Nevertheless, without going
into the minutiae of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the
sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things some-
body or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though
it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that sort
of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and
insurance, which were run on identically the same lines so that for that
very reason, if no other, lifeboat Sunday was a very laudable institution
to which the public at large, no matter where living, inland or seaside,
as the case might be, having it brought home to them like that, should
extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service
who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid the elements,
whatever the season, when duty called Ireland expects that every man
and so on, and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not
forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any
moment rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced
some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.

T here was a fellow sailed with me in the the old seadog,

himself a rover, proceeded. Went ashore and took up a soft job as
gentleman s valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I’ve on
me and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I’m game for that
job, shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There’s my son
now, Danny, run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper’s
in Cork where he could be drawing easy money.

What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from
the side, bore a distant resemblance to Henry Campbell, the town-
clerk, away from the carking cares of office, unwashed, of course, and

592

in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion ot nosepamt about the nasal

appendage. ^ .

\Vhy» the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance. My son

Danny? He’d be about eighteen now, way 1 figure it.

The Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or imclean

anyhow shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on

which was to be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink, intended

to represent an anchor. , . e

There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked. Sure as

nuts. I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It’s them black lads
I objects to. I hate those buggers. Sucks your blood dry, they docs.

Seeing they w-erc all looking at his chest, he accommodatingly
dragged his shirt more open so that, on top of the timehonoured symbol
of the mariner's hope and rest, they had a full view of the figure i6
and a young man’s sidefacc looking frowningly rather.

—Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That w-as done when were
lying becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton.
Fellow the name of Antonio done that. There he is himself, a Greek.
—Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.

That w'orthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the

somew ay in his. Squeezing or . . .

—See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is, cursing the

mate. And there he is now’, he added. The same fellow, pulling the

skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at

And in point of fact the young man named Antonio’s livid face did
actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the
unreserved admiration of everybody, including Skin-thc-Goat who

this time stretched over.

—Ay. ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. Me s

gone too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.

He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expres-
sion of before.

Neat bit of work, longshoreman one said.

And w-hat’s the number for? loafer number two queried.

— Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor. .

Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time,

with some sort of a half smile, for a brief duration only, in the direction
of the questioner about the number. A Greek he was.

593

And then he added, with rather gallowsbird humour, considering
his alleged end:

— As bad as old Antonio,

For he left me on my ou'nio.

The face of a streetwalker, glazed and haggard under a black straw
hat, peered askew round the door of the shelter, palpably reconnoitring
on her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr
Bloom, scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the
moment, ftusterfied but outwardly calm, and picking up from the
table the pink sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if
such he was, had laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of
the paper though why pink.^ His reason for so doing was he recognised
on the moment round the door the same face he had caught a fleeting
glimpse of that afternoon on Ormond Quay, the partially idiotic female,
namely, of the lane, who knew the lady in the brown costume docs be
with you (Mrs B.), and begged the chance of his washing. Also why
w'ashing, which seemed rather vague than not.>

Your washing. Still, candour compelled him to admit that he had
washed his wife’s undergarments when soiled in Holies Street and
women would and did too a man’s similar garments initialled with
Bewley and Draper's marking ink (hers were, that is) if they really
loved him, that is to say. Love me, love my dirty shirt. Still, just
then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female’s room more than
her company so it came as a genuine relief w-hen the keeper made
her a rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the Evening
Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side
of the door w-ith a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was
not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of
gazers round Skipper Murphy’s nautical chest and then there was no
more of her.

— The gunboat, the keeper said.

— It beats me, Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, medically I am
speaking, how a wretched creature like that from the Lock Hospital,
recking with disease, can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any
man in his sober senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate
creature! Of course, I suppose some man is ultimately responsible for
her condition. Still no matter what the cause is from . . .

594

Stephen had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely
remarking:

In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do

a roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power
to buy the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells
cheap.

The elder man, though not by any manner ot means an old maid
or a prude, said that it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought
to be put a stop to instanter to say that women of that stamp (quite
apart from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary
evil, were not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authori-
ties, a thing he could truthfully state he, as a paterfamilias, was a
stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on
a policy of the sort, he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would
confer a lasting boon on everybody- concerned.

You, as a good catholic, he obsei^-ed, talking of body and soul,

believe in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower
as such, as distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that
cup? I believe in that myself because it has been explained by com-
petent men as the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we
would never have such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?

Thus cornered, Stephen had to make a superhuman effort of
memory to try and concentrate and remember before he could

say:

They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and

therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, 1 understand, but for
the possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause, Who, from all I
can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other
practical jokes, corruptio per se and corruptio per accuiens both being
excluded by court etiquette.

Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though
the mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still
he felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly

rejoining: _

—Simple? I shouldn’t think that is the proper word. Of course, L

grant you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once

in a blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing

for instance to invent those rays Ronigcn did, or the telescope like

Edison, though I believe it was before his time, Galileo was the man

595

I mean. The same applies to the laws, for example, of a farrcaching
natural phenomenon such as electricity but it’s a horse of quite another
colour to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God.

— O, that, Stephen expostulated, has been proved conclusively by
several of the best known passages in Holy \\’rit, apart from circum-
stantial evidence.

On this knotty point, however, the views of the pair, poles apart
as they were, both in schooling and everything else, with the marked
difference in their respective ages, clashed.

— Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to
his original point. I’m not so sure about that. That’s a matter of
every man’s opinion and, without dragging in the sectarian side of the
business, I beg to differ with you in toto there. My belief is, to tell you
the candid truth, that those bits were genuine forgeries all of them put
in by monks most probably or it’s the big question of our national poet
over again, w’ho precisely wrote them, like HamUt and Bacon, as
you w'ho know your Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of course I
needn’t tell you. Can’t you drink that coffee, by the way? Let me
stir it and take a piece of that bun. It’s like one of our skipper’s bricks
disguised. Still, no one can give what he hasn’t got. Try a bit.

— Couldn’t, Stephen contrived to get out, his mental organs for the
moment refusing to dictate further.

Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat, Mr Bloom thought well
to stir, or try to, the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with
something approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its
temperance (and lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object
and beyond yea or nay did a world of good. Shelters such as the
present one they w-ere in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night,
concerts, dramatic evenings, and useful lectures (admittance free)
by qualified men for the lower orders. On the other hand, he
had a distinct and painful recollection they paid his wife, Madam
Marion Tweedy who had been prominently associated with it at
one time, a very modest remuneration indeed for her piano-playing.
The idea, he was strongly inclined to believe, was to do good and
net a profit, there being no competition to speak of. Sulphate of
copper poison, SO, or something in some dried peas he remembered
reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn’t re-
member when it was or where. Anyhow, inspection, medical inspec-
tion, of all eatables, seemed to him more than ever necessary which

possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr 1 ibble s V^i-Cocoa on account
of the medical analysis involved.

Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being

stirred.

Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it, Stephen lifted the heavy
mug from the brown puddle — it cloppcd out of it when taken up—
by the handle and took a sip of the offending beverage.

— Still, it’s solid food, his good genius urged. I’m a stickler for solid
food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but
regular meals as the sine <jua non for any kind of proper work, mental
or manual. You ought to cat more solid food. You would feel a
diff erent man.

— Liquids I can cat, Stephen said. But oblige me by taking away
that knife. I can’t look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman
history.

Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated
article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly
Roman or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was
the least conspicuous point about it.

— Our mutual friend’s stories arc like himself, Mr Bloom, apropos
of knives, remarked to his confidante sotto voce. Do you think they arc
genuine? He could spin those yams for hours on end all night long
and lie like old boots. Look at him.

Yet still, though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air, life was
full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it was
quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire fabrica-
tion though at first blush there was not much inherent probability in
all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate gospel.

He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him
and Sherlockholmesing him up, ever since he clapped eyes on him.
Though a wcllprcservcd man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to
baldness, there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that
suggested a jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagina-
tion to associate such a wcirdlooking specimen with the oakum and
treadmill fraternity. He might even have done for his man, supposing
it was his own case he told, as people often did about others, namely,
that he killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking
years in durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no
relation to the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from

597

the pen of our national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melo-
dramatic manner above described. On the other hand he might be
only bluffing, a pardonable weakness, because meeting unmistakable
mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad,
would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw
the long bow about the schooner Hesperus and etcetera. And w'hcn all
was said and done, the lies a fellow told about himself couldn’t probably
hold a proverbial candle to the w'holesale whoppers other fellows coined
about him.

— Mind you. I’m not saying that it’s all a pure invention, he
resumed. Analogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with.
Giants, though, that is rather a far cry you see once in a way. Marcella,
the midget queen. In those w’axworks in Henry street I myself saw
some Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged. They couldn’t
straighten their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you
see, he proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline, the
sinews, or whatever you like to call them, behind the right knee, were
utterly powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being
adored as gods. There’s an example again of simple souls.

How'cvcr, reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures
(w’ho reminded him a bit of Ludwig, alias Ledwidge, when he occu-
pied the boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with
the management in the Flying Dutchman^ a stupendous success, and
his host of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking
to hear him though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the
stage usually fell a bit flat as also did trains), there was nothing intrin-
sically incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary, that stab
in the back touch was quite in keeping with those Italianos, though
candidly he was none the less free to admit those ice creamers and friers
in the fish way, not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth,
over in little Italy there, near the Coombe, were sober thrifty hard-
working fellows except perhaps a bit loo given to pothunting the
harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night
so as to have a good old succulent tuck in with garlic de rigueur oflF
him or her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.

— Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments
like that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their
own hands and give you your quietus double quick with those
poignards they carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat,

598

climate generally. My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half, that i>.
Point of fact she could actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted,
having been born in (technically) Spain, i. e. Gibraltar. She has the
Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette, black. I, for one,
certainly believe climate accounts for character. That’s why 1 asked
you if you wrote your poetry in Italian.

— The temperaments at the door, Stephen interposed with, were
very passionate about ten shillings. Roherto ruha ro/>a suu.

— Quite so, Mr Bloom dittoed.

— Then, Stephen said, staring and rambling on to himself or some
unknown listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and
the isosceles triangle. Miss Portinari, he fell in love with and Leonardo
and san Tommaso Mastino.

—It’s in the blood, Mr Bloom acceded at once. All are washed in
the blood of the sun. Coincidence, I just happened to be in the
Kildare street Museum today, shortly prior to our meeting, if I can
so call it, and I was just looking at those antique statues there. 1 he
splendid proportions of hips, bosom. You simply don’t knock against
those kind of women here. An exception here and there. Handsome,
yes, pretty in a way you find, but what Tm talking about is the female
form. Besides, they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which
greatly enhances a woman’s natural beauty, no matter what you
say. Rumpled stockings — it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine, but
still it’s a thing 1 simply hate to sec.

Interest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and the
others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog,
collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy, of course,
had his own say to say. He had doubled the Cape a few odd times and
weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through
all those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to
him, or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.

So then after that they drifted on to the wreck of Daunt s rock,
wreck of that illfatcd Norwegian barque — nobody could think of her
name for the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of
Henry Campbell remembered it, Palme^ on Booterstown Strand, that
was the talk of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine
piece of original verse of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish
Times) breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore in
commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about

599

the case of the. s. s. Lady Cairns of Swansea, run into by the Mona,
which was on an opposite tack, in rather muggyish weather and lost
with all hands on deck. No aid w’as given. Her master, the Mona's,
said he was afraid his collision bulkhead would give way. She had no
water, it appears, in her hold.

At this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for
him to unfurl a reef, the sailor vacated his seat.

— Let me cross your bows, male, he said to his neighbour, w'ho was
just gently dropping off into a peaceful doze.

He made tracks heavily, slowly, with a dumpy sort of a gait to the
door, stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter
and bore due left. VVhile he was in the act of getting his bearings, Mr
Bloom, who noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of pre-
sumably ship's rum sticking one out of each pocket for the private
consumption of his burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and
uncork it, or unscrew, and, applying its nozzle to his lips, lake a good
old delectable sw'ig out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible
Bloom, who also had a shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on
a mancEuvre after the counterattraction in the shape of a female, who,
however, had disappeared to all intents and purposes, could, by strain-
ing, just perceive him, when duly refreshed by his rum puncheon
exploit, gazing up at the piers and girtfers of the Loop Line, rather out
of his depth, as of course it was all radically altered since his last visit
and greatly improved. Some person or persons invisible directed him
to the male urinal erected by the cleansing committee all over the
place for the purpose but, after a brief space of time during which
silence reigned supreme, the sailor, evidently giving it a wide berth,
eased himself close at hand, the noise of his bilgewater some little time
subsequently splashing on the ground where it apparently woke a
horse of the cabrank.

A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and liarncss
jingled. Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke,
the watcher of the corporation, w'ho, though now broken down and
fast breaking up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumlcy
aforesaid, now practically on the parish rates, given the temporary job
by Pat Tobin in all human probability, from dictates of humanity,
knowing him before— shifted about and shuffled in his box before
composing his limbs again in the arms of Morpheus. A truly amazing
piece of hard times in its most virulent form on a fellow most respectably

600

connected and familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who
came in for a cool £ioo a year at one time which of course the double-
barrelled ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes ot. And
there he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the
town tolerably pink, without a beggarly stiver. He drank, needless to
be told, and it pointed only once more a moral when he might quite
easily be in a large way of business if— a big if, however— he had con-
trived to cure himself of his particular partiality.

All, meantime, were loudly lamenting the tailing od in Irish
shipping, coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel
of the same thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the w ays at
Alexandra Basin, the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours
were there only no ships ever called.

There w’ere wTCcks and wTccks, the keeper said, who was evidently

au fair.

What he w'anted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the
only rock in Galway Bay when the Galway Harbour scheme was
mooted by a Mr Worthington or some name like that, eh.* .^sk her
captain, he advised them, how much palmoil the British Government
gave him for that day’s work. Captain John Lever of the Lever line.

— Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor now returning after
his private potation and the rest of his exertions.

That worthy, picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or
W’ords, growled in W'ouldbe music, but with great vim, some kind of
chanty or other in seconds or thirds. Mr Bloom s sharp ears heard him
then expectorate the plug probably (which it was), so that he must ha\ e
lodged it for the time being in his fist while he did the drinking and
making water jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in ques-
tion. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful libation — cum — pota-
tion, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the soiree, boisterously
trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook;

— The biicuils u'as as htird os brass,

And the beef as salt as Lot's U'ife's arse.

O Johnny Lever!

Johnny Lever, O!

After which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the
scene and, regaining his scat, he sank rather than sat heavily on the
form provided.

Skin-thc-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind,

6oi

was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the
natural resources of Ireland, or something of that sort, which he
described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on
the face of God’s earth, far and away superior to England, with coal
in large quantities, six million pounds’ worth of pork exported every
year, ten millions between butter and eggs, and all the riches drained
out of It by E'ngland levying taxes on the poor people that paid through
the nose always, and gobbling up the best meat in the market, and a
lot more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accord-
ingly became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could
grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was Colonel
hvenird down there in Cavan growing tobacco. Where would you find
anywhere the like of Irish bacon? But a day of reckoning, he stated
uith no uncertain voice— thoroughly monopolising all the
conversation— was in store for mighty England, despite her power of
pc f on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest
tal in history. 1 he Germans and the Japs were going to have their
little look'in, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end.
Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would
be Irel.nnd, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the
vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero-a point his auditors at
once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the
tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman w-as:
stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for
Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.

bilcnce all round marked the termination of his finale. The im-
pervious navigator heard these lurid tidings undismayed.

—1 ake a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably
a bit peeved m response to the foregoing truism. r r j

To which cold douche, referring to downfall and so on, the keeper
concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.

-Who’s the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately

interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals

and generals we’ve got? Tell me that.

— That^ right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic

^'whi!;. of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?

While allowing him his individual opinions, as every man, the

602

keeper added he eared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and con-
sidered no Irishman worthy of his salt that scn.'ed it. Then they began
to have a few irascible words, when it waxed hotter, both, needless to
say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with
interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to
blows.

From inside information extending over a series of years Mr Bloom
was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash
for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished
for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the
channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he look them for,
rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a
par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million
years the coal scam of the sister island would be played out and if, as
time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could
personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies,
equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advis-
able in the interim to try to make the most of both countries, even
though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the amours of
whores and chummics, to put it in common parlance, reminded him
Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so,
in fact. And now, why.^ So the scene between the pair of them, the
licensee of the place, rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the
famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him
forcibly as being on all fours with the conhdence trick, supposing, that
is, it was prearranged, as the lookcron, a student of the human soul,
if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the lessee
or keeper, who probably wasn’t the other person at all, he (Bloom)
couldn’t help feeling, and most properly, it was better to give people
like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and
refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private life
and their felonsetting, there always being the ofFchance of a Dannyman
coming forward and turning queen’s evidence — or king’s now — like
Denis or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart
from that, he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on
principle. Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an
inmate of his bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel, and
no denying it (while inwardly remaining what he was), a certain kind
of admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel,

603

with the courage of his political convictions though, personally, he
would never be a party to any such thing, off the same bat as those
love vendettas of the south — have her or swing for her — when the
husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concern-
ing her relations with the other lucky mortal (the man having had the
pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of
an alternative postnuptial liaison by plunging his knife into her until
it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-thc-Goat, merely drove
the car tor the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so w’as not, if he
was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point
of tact, w as the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any
case tliat was very ancient history by now' and as for our friend, the
pseudo Skin-thc-ctcetcra, he had transparently outlived his w'elcome.
He ought to iiave either died naturally or on the scaffold high. Like
actresses, always farewell — positively last performance then come up
smiling again. Generous to a fault, of course, temperamental, no
economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for
tiK shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr
Jolinny Lever got rid of some s. d. in the course of his perambula-
tions round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the Old Ireland
tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the others, he had
lieard not so long before the same identical lingo, as he told Stephen
how' he simply but eftectually silenced the offender.

— He took umbrage at something or other, that much-injured but
on the whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a
jew, and in a heated fashion, offensively. So I, without deviating from
plain facts in the least, told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew' too,
and all his family, like me, though in reality I’m not. That was one
for hin^. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn’t a word to say
for himself as everyone saw-. Am I not right?

He turned a long you are w-rong gaze on Stephen of timorous dark
pride at the soft impeachment, with a glance also of entreaty for he

seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn’t all exactly . .

— £x quihusy Stephen mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two
or four eyes conversing, Christus or Bloom his name is, or, after all,
any other, secundum carnem.

— Of course, Mr Bloom proceeded to stipulate, you must look at
both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast
rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there

604

certainly is though every country, they say, our own distressful
included, has the government it deserves. But with a little goodwill
all round. It’s all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what
about mutual equality? I resent violence or intolerance in any shape
or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution
must come on the due instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the
face of it to hate people because thev live round the corner and speak
another vernacular, so to speak.

— Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes’ war, Stephen
assented, between Skinner’s alley and Ormond market.

Yes, Mr Bloom thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark,
that was overwhelmingly right and the whole world w'as overwhelm-
ingly full of that sort of thing.

— You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus
of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn’t remotely . . .

All those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad
blood — bump of combativencss or gland of some kind, erroneously
supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag — were very
largely a question of the money question w’hich was at the back of
everything, greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.

— I'hey accuse — remarked he audibly. He turned away from the
others, w'ho probably . . . and spoke nearer to, so as the others . . .
in case they . . .

— ^jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen’s ear, arc accused
of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, 1 can safely say. History —
would you be surprised to learn? — proves up to the hilt Spain decayed
when the Inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered
when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian, who, in other respects,
has much to answ’cr for, imported them. Why? Because they arc
practical and arc proved to be so. I don’t want to indulge in any . . .
because you know the standard works on the subject, and then,
orthodox as you arc . . . But in the economic, not touching religion,
domain, the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war,
compared with goahead America. Turks, it’s in the dogma. Because
if they didn’t believe they’d go straight to heaven when they die
they’d try to live better — at least, so I think. That’s the juggle on
which the p.p.’s raise the wind on false pretences. I m, he resumed,
with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told
you about at the outset and I want to sec everyone, concluded he, all

creeds and classes pro rata having a comfortable tidysized income, in
no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of ,^300
per annum. That’s the vital issue at stake and it’s feasible and would
be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At
least that’s my idea for what it’s worth. I call that patriotism. XJbi
patria, as we learned a small smattering of in our classical day in Alma
Mater, vita bene. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work.

Over his untasteable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this
synopsis of things in general, Stephen stared at nothing in particular.
He could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those
crabs about Ringsend in the morning, burrowing quickly into all
colours of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home
somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the
eyes that said or didn’t say the words the voice he heard said — if you
work.

— Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning to work.

The eyes were surprised at this observation, because as he, the
person who owned them pro. tern, observed, or rather, his voice
speaking did; All must work, have to, together.

— I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest
possible sense. Also literary labour, not merely for the kudos of the
thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel
nowadays. That’s work too. Important work. After all, from the little
I know of you, after all the money expended on your education, you
are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have
every bit as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philo>
Sophy as the peasant has. What.^ You both belong to Ireland, the brain
and the brawn. Each is equally important.

— You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I
may be important because I belong to the jaubourg Saint-Pa/rke
called Ireland for short.

— I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.

— But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be impor-
tant because it belongs to me.

What belongs? queried Mr Bloom, bending, fancying he was
perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately I
didn’t catch the latter portion. What was it you? . . .

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug
of coffee, or whatever you like to call it, none too politely, adding:

606

— We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.

At this pertinent suggestion, Mr Bloom, to change the subject,
looked down, but in a quandary, as he couldn’t tell exactly what
construction to put on belongs to which sounded rather a tar crv. I he
rebuke of some kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to sav,
the fumes of his recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a
curious bitter way, foreign to his sober state. Probably tlie home life,
to which Mr Bloom attached the utmost importance, had not been all
that was needful or he hadn’t been familiarised with the right sort of
people. With a touch of fear tor the young .nan beside him. whom lie
furtively scrutinised with an air of some C'U.sternation remembering
he had just come back from Paris, tlic eves more especially reminding
him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light on the
subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that
promised so brilliantly, nipped in the bud of premature decav, and
nobody to blame but themselves. For instance, there was the case of
O’Callaghan, for one, the half crazy faddist, respectably connected,
though of inadequate means, with his mad \ agarics, among w hose other
gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody all
round he w-as in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of
brow’n paper (a fact). And then the usual dfnoutmtni alter the fun had
gone on fast and furious he got landed into hot water and had to be
spirited aw'ay by a few' friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse
from John Mallon of Low’cr Castle Yard, so as not to be made amen-
able under section two of the Criminal Law .Amendment Act, certain
names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged, for
reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Bricrty,
putting two and two together, six sixteen, which he pointedly turned
a deaf car to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo
which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts, even in the House
of Lords, because early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir
apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high person-
ages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state, he
reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running
counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number ol years
before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a
thing good Mrs Grundy as the law stands was terribly dowm on,
though not for the reason they thought they were probably, whatever
it was, except women chiefly, who were always fiddling more or less

607

at one another, it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it.
Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and every well-
tailored man must, trying to make the gap wider between them by
innuendo and give more of a genuine fillip to acts of impropriety
between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he untied her, mind the
pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in
the shade not caring a continental. However, reverting to the original,
there were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the
top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force
of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.

For which and further reasons he felt it was interest and duty even
to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion, though why, he
could not exactly tell, being, as it was, already several shillings to the
bad, having, in fact, let liimself in for it. Still, to cultivate the acquain-
tance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for
reflection would amply repay any small . . . Intellectual stimulation
as such was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind.
Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row,
old salt, of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the
whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the
world we live in, especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz.,
coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the micro-
scope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he
might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip
Bcaufoy if taken down in writing. Suppose he were to pen something
out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at4he rate of
one guinea per column, My Experiences^ let us say, in a Cabman's
Shelter.

The pink edition, extra sporting, of the Telegraphy tell a graphic
lie, lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just
puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him
and the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the
postcard was addressed to A. Boudin, find the captain’s age, his eyes
went aimlessly over the respective captions which came under his
special province, the allembracing give us this day our daily press.
First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to be only something about
somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or something
like that. Great battle Tokio. Lovemaking in Irish damages.
Gordon Bennett. Emigration swindle. Letter from His Grace

608

William t. Ascot Thrcncatray recalls Derby of ’92 when Captain
MarshalPs dark horse. Sir Hugo, captured the blue riband at long
odds. New York disaster, thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth.
Funeral of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.

So to change the subject he read about Dignam, R. I. P., which,
he reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff.

— This morning (Hynes put it in, of course), fhe r^mnins of the late
Mr Patrick Dignam “were removed from his residence, 9 Xe-u-hridge
Avenue, Sandymount, jor interment in Glasnn-in. The deceased gentle-
man was a most popular and genial personality in city life and his demise,
ajter a briej illness, came as great shock to citizens oj all classes hy whom
he is deeply regretted. The obsequies, at which many friends of the deceased
•were present, •were carried out (certainly Hynes wrote it with a nudge
from Corny) by Messrs. H. y. O'Xeill Sx. Son, [64 Sorth Strand road.
The mourners included: Patk. Dignam (son), Bernard Corrigan (brother-
in-law), yohn Henry Menton, soir., Martin Cunningham, yohn Power
eatondph 1/8 ador dorador douradora (must be where he c.al)cd Monks
the dayfathcr about Keyes’s ad), Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus,
Stephen Dedalus, B. A., Edward y . Lambert, Cornelius Kelleher, yoseph
M'C. Hynes, L. Boom, C. P. M'Coy, — M'lntosh, and several others.

Nettled not a little by L. Boom (as it incorrectly stated) and the line
of bitched type, but tickled to death simultaneously bv C. P. M'Coy
and Stephen Dedalus, B. A., who were conspicuous, needless to say,
by their total absence (to say nothing of M’lntosh), L. Boom pointed
it out to his companion B. A., engaged in stifling another yawn, half
nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers ot
misprints.

— Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked, as soon as his bottom
jaw would let him, in.^ Text; open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.

— It is, really, Mr Bloom said (though first he fancied he alluded
to the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there
could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and
a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford’s after all managing the thing,
there.

While the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for
the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments
in fits and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page
three, his sidevalue 1,000 sovs., with 3,000 sovs. in specie added for
entire colts and fillies, Mr F. Alexander’s Throwaway, b. h. by Right-

bog 2B

away, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs, Thrale (W. Lan*) i. Lord Howard de Walden's
Zinjartdcl (M, Cannon) 2. Mr W. Bas;’s Sceptre, 3. Betting 5 to 4 on
Zinjandet, 20 to i Throwaway (ofF). Throwaway and Zinjandel iXood
close order. It was anybody’s race then the rank outsider drew to the
fore got long lead, beating lord Howard de Walden’s chestnut colt
and Mr W. Bass s bay filly Sceptre on z 2 iji mile course. Winner
trained by Braine so that Lenehan’s version of the business was all
pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length, i ,000 sovs,
with 3000 in specie. Also ran J. de Bremond’s (French horse Bantam
Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any
minute) Maximum II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Love-
making damages. Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent
in his impetuosity to get left. Of course, gambling eminently lent
itself to that sort of thing though, as the event turned out, the poor
fool hadn’t much reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the
forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced itself to eventually.

— There was every indication they would arrive at that, Mr Bloom
said.

— Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.

One morning you would open the paper, 'the cabman affirmed, and
read, Return oj Parnell. He bet them what they liked, A Dublin
fusilier was in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South
Africa. Pride it was killed him.. He ought to have done away with
himself or lain low for a time after Committee Room No. 1 5 until
he was his old self again with no-one to point a finger at him. Then
they would all to a man have gone down on their marrowbones to him
to come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he wasn’t.
Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full
of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He
made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.

All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at
their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrcls,
and not singly but in their thousands, and then complete oblivion
because it was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely, of course, there was
even a shadow of truth in the stories and, even supposing, he thought a
return highly inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently
riled them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute
pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were
nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his

610

having neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a
cold resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to
his room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a
fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find
the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being ac-
quainted with his movements even before, there was absolutely no clue
as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, ichere art thou
order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox
and Stewart, so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might
be within the bounds of possibility. Naturally then, it would prey on
his mind as a born leader of men, which undoubtedly he was, and a
commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in
his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So-and-So who, though they
weren’t even a patch on the former man, ruled the roost after their
redeeming features were very few and far between. It certainly
pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay. And then seventytwo of
his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual mudslinging. And
the Identical same with murderers. You had to come back — that
haunting sense kind of drew you — to show the understudy in the title
role how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they
broke up the type in the Imuppressible or was it XJriited Ireland, a
privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his
silk hat when it w as knocked off and he said Thank you, excited as he
undoubtedly was under his frigid expression notwithstanding the little
misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip— what’s bred in
the bone. Still, as regards return, you were a lucky dog if they didn’t
set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally
usually followed. Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then,
number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to
produce your credentials, like the claimant in the Tichborne case,
Roger Charles Tichborne, Bella was the boat’s name to the best of his
recollection he, the heir, went down in, as the evidence went to show,
and there w'as a tattoo mark too in Indian ink. Lord Bellew, was it^
As he might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on
board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description given,
introduce himself with, Excuse mt, my name is So^and^So or some such
commonplace remark. A more prudent course, Mr Bloom said to the
not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under dis-
cussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land first.

6i I

— That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen pro-
prietor commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.

— Fine lump of a woman, all the same, the soi-disant townclerk,
Henry Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. I seen her picture in
a barber’s. Her husband was a captain or an officer.

— Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added. He was, and a cottonballone.

This gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a
fair amount of laughter among his entourage. As regards Bloom, he,
without the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction
of the door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused
extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters
worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed
between them, full of sweet nothings. First, it was strictly platonic
till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them, till
bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk
of the town till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to
not a few' evildisposed however, w’ho were resolved upon encouraging
his downfall though the thing was public property all along though
not to anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently
blossomed into. Since their names were coupled, though, since he was
her declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim
it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact namely, that he had
shared her bedroom, which came out in the witnessbox on oath when
a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody
in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such
and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs
apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having
gained admittance in the same fashion, a fact that the weeklies, addicted
to the lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas
the simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband
not being up to the scratch with nothing in common between them
l^yond the name and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to
the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and for-
getting home ties. The usual sequel, to bask in the loved one’s smiles.
The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up.
Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case,
exist between married folk.^ Though it was no concern of theirs
^ regarded her with affection carried away by a wave
of folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly, augmented

6i2

obviously by gifts of a high order as compared with the other military
supernumerary, that is (v-’ho was just the usual everday jarev:eU^ my
gallant captain kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the i8th
hussars to be accurate), and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader,
that is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course,
woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame,
which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the
gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents and his beloved
evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman ser\’icc in the rural
parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way
that exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked
his matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head,
much in the same way as the fabled ass’s kick. Looking back now in a
retrospective kind of arrangement, all scented a kind of dream. And
the coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it went
without saying you .would feel out of place as things always moved
with the times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown Strand, a locality
he had not been in for quite a number of years, looked different some-
how since, as it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North
or south however, it was just the wellknowm case of hot passion, pure
and simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore
out the very thing he w'as saying, as she also was Spanish or half so,
types that wouldn’t do things by halves, passionate abandon of the
south, casting every shread of decency to the winds.

— ^Just bears out what I was saying, he with glowing bosom said to
Stephen. And, if I don’t greatly mistake, she was Spanish too.

—The king of Spain’s daughter, Stephen answered, adding some-
thing or other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish
onions and the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to
Scilly was so and so many ...

—Was she? Bloom ejaculated surprised, though not astonished by
any means. I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially

there it was, as she lived there. So, Spain.

Carefully avoiding a book in his pocket S^ets ojy which reminded
him by the by of that Capel street library book out of date, he took
out his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents rapidly,

finally he . . . r j j

—Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded

photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type.^

613

Stephen, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing
a large sized- lady, with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open
fashion, as she was in the full bloom of womanhood, in evening dress
cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to give a liberal display of
bosom, with more than vision of breasts, her full lips parted, and some
perfect teeth, standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano, on the
rest of which was In old Madrid, a ballad, pretty in its way, which
was then all the vogue. Her (the lady’s) eyes, dark, large, looked at
Stephen, about to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of
Westmoreland street, Dublin’s premier photographic artist, being
responsible for the esthetic execution.

— Mrs Bloom, my wife the prima donna. Madam Marion Tweedy,
Bloom indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ’96. Very
like her then.

Beside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now
his legal wife who, he intimated, was the accogiplished daughter of
Major Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable
proficiency as a singer having even made her bow to the public when
her years numbered barely sweet sixteen. As for the face, it was a
speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her figure,
which came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out
to the best advantage in that getup. She could without difficulty, he
said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent
curves of the . . . He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his spare time,
on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so
happened, no later than that afternoon, he had seen those Grecian

statues, perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum.
Marble could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry.
All the rest, yes, Puritanism. It does though, St. Joseph’s sovetcign
. . . whereas no photo could, because it simply wasn’t art, in a word.

The spirit moving him, he would much have liked to follow Jack
Tar s good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes
to speak for itself on the plea he ... so that the other could drink
in the beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat
in itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was
scarcely professional etiquette so, though it was a warm pleasant sort
of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for
sunshine after storm . . . And he did feel a kind of need there and
then to follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible

614

need by moving a motion. Nevertheless, he sat tight, just viewing the
slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the w’orsc for
wear, however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not
further increasing the other’s possible embarrassment while gauging
her symmetry of heaving embonpoint. In fact, the slight s^iUng was
only an added charm, like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new',
much belter, in fact, with the starch out. Suppose she was gone
when hc.^ ... I looked for the lamp which she told me came into
his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because he then recol-
lected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby
with met him pike hoses [sic) in it which must have fell down suffi-
ciently appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to
Lindley Murray.

The vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated,
distingui^ and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the
bunch, though you wouldn’t think he had it in him . . . yet you
would. Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you
like, it was, though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why
not? An awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing
involving a lifelong slur w'ith the usual splash page of letterpress about
the same old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional
golfer or the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and
aboveboard about the whole business. How they were fated to meet
and an attachment sprang up between the two so that their names were
coupled in the public eye was told in court with letters containing the
habitual mushy and compromising expressions, leaving no loophole,
to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week at some
wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal
course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree nisi and the
King’s Proctor to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, nisi was
made absolute. But as for that, the two misdemeanants, wrapped up
as they largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it
as they very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a
solicitor, who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He,
Bloom, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin’s uncrowned
king in the flesh when the thing occurred on the \\\%ioncJracas when
the fallen leader’s — who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop
even when clothed in the mantle of adultery — (leader’s) trusty hench-
men to the number of ten or a dozen or possibly even more than that

615

penetrated into the printing works of the InsuppressibU or no it was
Vmted Ireland (a bv no means, by the by, appropriate appellative)
and broke up the typecascs with hammers or something like that all on
account of some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the
O’Brienite scribes at the usual nmdslinging occupation, reflecting on
tltc erstwhile tribune’s private morals. Though palpably a radically
altered man, he was still a commanding figure, though carelessly
garbed ns usual, with that look of settled purpose which went a long
wav with the shillvshallvcrs till they discovered to their vast discomfi-
ture that their idol had feet of clay, after placing him upon a pedestal,
which she, however, was the first to perceive. .As those were particu-
larly hot times in the general hullaballoo Bloom sustained a minor
injury from a nasty prod of some chap’s elbow in the crowd that of
cotirsc congregated lodging some place about the pit of the stomach,
fortunately not ot a grave character. His hat (Parncirs) was inadver-
tently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Bloom was the man
who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning
to return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost
celerity) who, panting and hatless and whose thoughts w'cre miles
away from his hat at the time, being a gentleman born with a stake
in the country, he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for
the kudos of the thing than anything else, what’s bred in the bone,
instilled into him in infancy at his mother’s knee in the shape of know-
ing what good form was came out at once because he turned round to
the donor and thanked hitn with perfect aplomb^ saying: Thank you^
sir though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the
legal profession whose headgear Bloom also set to rights earlier in the
course of the day, history repeating itself w'ith a difference; after the
burial of a mutual frictid when they had left him alone in his glory
alter the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave.

On the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant
jokes of the cabmen and so on, who passed it all off as a jest, laughing
immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the
wherefore, and in reality not knowing their owm minds, it being a case
for the tw’o parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate
husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous
letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at
the crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another’s arms
drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a

6 ! 6

domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her
lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever tlic connection
and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would
overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones, with tears in her eyes,
though possibly with her tongue in her fair check at the same time, as
quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a
sceptical bias, believed, and didn’t make the smallest bones about
saying so either, that man, or men in the plural, were always hanging
around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the
best w’ifc in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake
of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of
wedded life, and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press
their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her
affections centred on another, the cause of many liaisons between still
attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger
men, no doubt as several famous cases ot feminine intatuation proved
up to the hilt.

It was a thousand pities a young fellow blessed with an allowance of
brains, as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time
with profligate women, who might present him with a nice dose to
last him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one
day take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene
but in the interim ladies’ society was a conditio sine qua non though he
had the gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to
pump Stephen about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the
particular lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in
the morning), as to whether he would find much satisfaction basking
in the boy and girl courtship idea and the company of smirking misses
without a penny to their names bi- or tri-wcckly with the orthodox
preliminary canter of complimentpaying and walking out leading up
to fond lovers* ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house and
homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, was
really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out
with attracted the elder man who was several years the other’s senior
or like his father. But something substantial he certainly ought to eat,
were it only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment
or, failing that, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled.

— At what o’clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and
tired though unwrinkled face.

617

— Some time yesterday, Stephen said.

— Yesterday, exclaimed Bloom till he remembered it was already
tomorrow, Friday. Ah, you mean it’s after twelve!

— The day before yesterday, Stephen said, improving on himself.

Literally astounded at this piece of intelligence, Bloom reflected.
Though they didn’t see eye to eye in everything, a certain analogy
there somehow was, as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak,
in the one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics
roughly sonie score of years previously when he had been a quasi
aspirant to parliamentary honours in the Buckshot Foster days he too
recollected in retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in
itself) he had a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance,
when the evicted tenants’ question, then at its first inception, bulked
largely in people’s minds though, it goes without saying, not contribut-
ing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of
which wouldn’t exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle, at all
events, was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession, as voicing
the trend of modern opinion, a partiality, however, which, realising his
mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of, and even was twitted
with going a step further than Michael Davitt in the striking views
he at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason
he strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a
fashion at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan’s so that he,
though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious
of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give
him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though so far as politics
themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casual-
ties invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual
animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone con-
clusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word.

Anyhow, upon weighing the pros and cons, getting on for one as it
was, it w'as high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it
was a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly
ensue (somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the
hash altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog
(breed unknown) with a lame paw, not that the cases were either
identical or the reverse, though he had hurt his hand too, to Ontario
Terrace, as he very^distinctly remembered, having been there, so to
speak. On the other hand it w’as altogether far and away too late for

the Sandymount or Sandycovc suggestion so that he was in some
perplexity as to which of the two alternatives . . , Everything
pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of
the opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was that
he was a bit standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him some-
way. For one thing he mightn’t what you call jump at the idea, if
approached, and what mostly worried him was he didn't know how
to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did entertain the
proposal, as it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he
would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if
found suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing
for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps’s cocoa and a
shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat
doubled into a pillow. At least he would be in safe hands and as warm
as a toast on a trivet. He failed to perceive any very vast amount of
harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked
up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the grass-
widower in question, who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn’t
appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly
beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger’s bawdy-
house of retired beauties off Sheriff street lower would be the best
clue to that equivocal character’s whereabouts for a few days to come,
alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids’) with sixchamber
revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze the
marrow of anybody’s bones and mauling their largesized charms
betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of
large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as
to who he in reality was let XX equal my right name and address, as
Mr Algebra remarks passim. At the same time he inwardly chuckled
over his repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his God being
a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what
properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable
point too of tender Achilles, your God was a jew, because mostly they
appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhere
about in the county Sligo.

— I propose, our hero eventually suggested, after mature reflection
while prudently pocketing her photo, as it’s rather stuffy here, you
just come with me and talk things over. My diggings arc quite close
in the vicinity. You can’t drink that stuff. Wait, I’ll just pay this lot.

619

The best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain
sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the
keeper ot the shanty, who didn’t seem to . . .

— Yes, that’s the best, he assured Stephen, to whom for the matter
of that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less . . .

All kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (Bloom’s)
busy brain. Education (the genuine article), literature, journalism,
prize titbits, up to date billing, hydros and concert tours in English
watering resorts packed with theatres, turning money away, ducts in
Italian with the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of
other things, no necessity of course to tell the world and his wife from
the housetops about it and a slice of luck. An opening was all was
wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his father’s voice to
bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be
just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the

direction of that particular red herring just to . . .

The cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former
viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers’ association
dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accom-
panied this thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the
corner who appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that
Sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary’s
lodge or words to that effect. To which absorbing piece of intelligence
echo answered why.

--Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner
put in, manifesting some natural impatience.

—And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed.

1 he sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles
which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.

— Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the town
clerk queried.

—Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly
was a bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of sea-
green portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles
reading. Sand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a
book in the dark, manner of speaking. The Arabian Nights' Entertain-
ment was my favourite and Red as a Rose is She.

Thereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only
knows what, found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Ircmonger

620

having made a hundred and something second wicket not out for
Notts, during which time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper w'as
intensely occupied loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot
W'hich manifestly pinched him, as he muttered against whoever it was
sold it, all of them who were sufficiently awake enough to be picked
out by their facial expressions, that is to say, either simply looking on
gluml y or passing a trivial remark.

To cut a long story short Bloom, grasping the situation, was the first
to rise to his feet so as not to outstay their welcome having first and
foremost, being as good as his word that he w’ould foot the bill for the
occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine
host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were
not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making
a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in
four coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans) he having previously
spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite to
him in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d., confectionery do., and
honestly well worth twice the money once in a way, as VVethcrup used
to remark.

— Come, he counselled, to close the siance.

Seeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear, they left the
shelter or shanty together and the Hitt society of oilskin and company
whom nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their dolctjar
niente. Stephen, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out,
paused at the, for a moment . . . the door to . . .

— One thing I never understood, he said, to be original on the spur
of the moment, why they put tables upside down at night, I mean
chairs upside down on the tables in cafes.

To which impromptu the never failing Bloom replied without a
moment’s hesitation, Saying straight off:

— To sweep the floor in the morning.

So saying he skipped around nimbly, considering frankly, at the
same time apologetic, to get on his companion’s right, a habit of his,
by the by, the right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles.
The night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Stephen was
a bit weak on his pins.

—It will (the air) do you good, Bloom said, meaning also the walk,
in a moment. The only thing is to walk then you’ll feel a different
man. It’s not far. Lean on me.

621

Accordingly he passed his left arm in Stephen’s right and led him
on accordingly-

— Yes, Stephen said unccnainly, because he thought he felt a strange
kind of fiesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly
and all that.

Anyhow, they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier, etc. where
the municipal supernumerary, ex-Gumley, was still to all intents and
purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming
of fresh fields and pastures new'. And apropos of coffin of stones, the
analogy was not at all bad, as it was in fact a stoning to death on the
part of seventytw’o out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the
time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the
selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.

So they passed on to chatting about music, a form of art for which
Bloom, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made
tracks arm-in-arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though
confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard
to follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante’s Huguenots^
Meyerbeer’s Seven Last Words on the Cross, and Mozart’s Twelfth
Mass, he simply revelled in, the Gloria in that being to his mind the
acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into
a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the catholic
church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line such as
those Moody and Sankey hymns or Bid me to live and I will live thy
prntestant to be. He also yielded to none in his admiration of Rossini’s
Stabai Mater, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers, in
w’hich his wife. Madam Marion Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable sensa-
tion, he might safely say greatly adding to her other laurels and putting
the others totally in the shade in the Jesuit fathers’ church in Upper
Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors to hear
her with virtuosos, or virtuosi rather. There w'as the unanimous opinion
that there was none to come up to her and, suffice it to say in a place
of worship for music of a sacred character, there was a generally voiced
desire for an encore. On the whole, though favouring preferably light
opera of the Don Giovanni description, and Martha, a gem in its line,
he had a penchant, though with only a surface knowledge, for the
severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that,
taking it for granted he knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned
par excellence Lionels air in Martha, M'appari, which, curiously

enough, he heard, or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a
privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Stephen’s respected
father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact, which made
all the others take a back scat. Stephen, in reply to a politely put
query, said he didn’t but launched out into praises of Shakespeare’s
songs, at least of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland who
lived in Fetter Lane near Gerard the herbalist, who anno ludendo hausi,
Doulandus, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr
Arnold Dolmclsch, whom Bloom did not quite recall, though the name
certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son
with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd (William), who played the
virginals, he said, in the Queen’s Chapel or anywhere else he found
them and one Tomkins w ho made toys or airs and John Bull.

On the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking
beyond the swing chain, a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the
paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise
Bloom was not perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the
allusion to sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. He inquired if it was John
Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical
names, as a striking coincidence.

By the chains, the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving
Bloom, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual plucked the other »
sleeve gently, jocosely remarking:

— Our lives are in peril to night. Beware of the steamroller.

They thereupon stopped. Bloom looked at the head of a horse not
worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark
quite near, so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and
even flesh, because palpably it was a fourvvalkcr, a hipshaker, a black-
buttocker, a taildanglcr, a headhangcr, putting his hind foot foremost
the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his
thoughts. But such a good poor brute, he was sorry he hadn t a lump
of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared
for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big foolish
nervous noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But
even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan s, of
the same size/ would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal s
fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the
desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of
them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man

623

barring the bees; whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator, tickle the
small of his back and he sees the joke; chalk a circle for a rooster; tiger,
my eagle eye. These timely reflections ancnt the brutes of the field
occupied his mind, somewhat distracted from Stephen’s words, while
the ship of the street was manoeuvring and Stephen went on about the
highly interesting old . . .

— What’s this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated,
plunging tn medias res^ would have the greatest of pleasure in making
your acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.

He looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Stephen,
image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual black-
guard type they unquestionably had an indubitable hankering after
as he was perhaps not that way built.

Still, supposing he had his father’s gift, as he more than suspected,
it opened up new vistas in his mind, such as Lady Fingall’s Irish
industries concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in
general.

Exquisite variations he was now describing on an air Touth here has
End by Jans Pieter Swcclinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the
frows come from. Even more he liked an old German song of Johannes
Jeep about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of
men, which boggled Bloom a bit:

ypH der Sirenen Listigkeit
Tun die Poeten duhten.

These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. Bloom,
nodding, said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by
all means, which he did.

A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons,
which Bloom appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily,
if properly handled by some recognised authority on voice production
such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain,
command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure
for Its fortunate possessor in the near future an entrie into fashionable
houses m the best residential quarters, of financial magnates in a large
way of business and titled people where, with his university degree of
B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the more
influence the good impression he would infallibly score a distinct

624

success, being blessed with brains which also could be utilised for the
purpose and other requisites, if his clothes were properly attended to,
so as to the better worm his way into their good graces as he, a youthful
tyro in society’s sartorial niceties, hardly understood how a little thing
like that could militate against you. It was in fact only a matter of
months and he could easily foresee him participating in their musical
and artistic convtrsaziones during the festivities of the Christmas season,
for choice, causing a slight Hutter in tlie dovecotes ot the fair sex and
being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he
happened to know, were on record, in fact, without gi\’ing the show
away, he himselt once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily ha\c
. . . Added to which of course, would be the pecuniary emolument
by no means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees.
Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need neces-
sarily embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space
of time but a step in the required direction it was, beyond yea or nay,
and both monetarily and mentally it contained no refiection on his
dignity in the smallest and it often turtied in uncommonly handy to be
handed a cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped.
Besides, though taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original
music like that, different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have
a great vogue, as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical
world after the usual hackneyed run ot catchy tenor solos foisted on a
confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their
omne. Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he could, with all the cards
in his hand and he had a capital opening to make a name for himself
and win a high place in the city’s esteem where he could command a
stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons
of the King street house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to
kick him upstairs, so to speak — a big //, however — with some impetus of
the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often
tripped up a too much feted prince of good fellows and it need not
detract from the other by one iota as, being his own master, he would
have heaps of time to practise literature in his spare moments when
desirous of so doing without its clashing with his vocal career or con-
taining anything derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself
alone. In fact, he had the ball at his feel and that w.as the very reason
why the other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat
of any sort, hung on to him at all.

625

2S

The horse was just then . . . and later on, at a propitious oppor-
tunity he purposed (Bloom did), without anyway prying into his
private affairs on the fools step tn where angels principle advising him to
sever his connection with a certain budding practitioner, who, he
noticed, was prone to disparage, and even, to a slight extent, with
some hilarious pretext, when not present, deprecate him, or whatever
you like to call it, w'hich, in Bloom’s humble opinion, threw a nasty
sidelight on that side of a person’s character — no pun intended.

The horse, having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted,
and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting
fall on the floor, which the brush would soon brush up and polish,
three smoking globes of turds. Slowly, three times, one after another,
from a full crupper, he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he
(or she) had ended, patient in his scythed car.

Side by side Bloom, profiting by the contretemps^ with Stephen
passed through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and,
stepping over a strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street
lower, Stephen singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the
ballad;

Und alle Schife brucken

The driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent. He merely
watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black-
one full, one lean — walk towards the railway bridge, to be married by
Father Maher. As they walked, they at times stopped and walked
again, continuing their teie-d-tete (which of course he was utterly out
of), about sirens, enemies of man’s reason, mingled with a number of
other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind
while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in the
sleeper car who in any case couldn’t possibly hear because they were
too far simply sat in his seat near the end of lower Gardiner street and
looked after their lo^obacked car.

★ WHAT PARALLEL COURSES DID BLOOM AND STEPHEN FOLLOW
returning?

Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place

626

they followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner btrects
and Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing IcU,
Gardiner’s place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner ot
Temple street, north: then at reduced pace with interruptions ot halt,
bearing right, Temple street, north, as tar as Hardwicke place.
Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both
the circus before George’s church diametrically, the chord in any circle
being less than the arc whicli it subtends.

Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?

Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman,
prostitution, diet, the inriuence of gaslight or the liglit of arc and glow-
lamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed
corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church,
ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, Jesuit education, careers, the
study of medicine, the past day, the maleficent inriuence ol the pre-
sabbath, Stephen’s collapse.

Did Bloom discover common factors of similaritv between their
respective like and unlike reactions to experience?

Both were sensitive to artistic impressions musical in preference to
plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular
manner of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both
indurated by early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of
heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many orthodox
religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the
alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual
magnetism.

Were their views on some points divergent?

Stephen dissented openly from Bloom’s views on the importance of
dietary and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen’s
views on the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature.
Bloom assented covertly to Stephen’s rectification of the anachronism
involved in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to
Christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Potitus,
son of Odyssus, sent by pope Cclestinc I in the year 432 in the reign
of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac
MacArt (t 266 A.D.) suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment
at Slctty and interred at Rossnarec. The collapse which Bloom

ascribed to gastric inanition and certain chemical compounds of vary-
ing degrees of adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by
mental exertion and the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing
atmosphere, Stephen attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal
cloud (perceived by both from two different points of observation,
Sandycove and Dublin) at first no bigger than a woman’s hand.

Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative?

The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining
paraheliotropic trees.

Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambula-
tions in the past?

In 1884 with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public
thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard’s corner and
Leonard’s corner and Synge street and Synge street and Bloomfield
avenue. In 1885 with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against
the wall between Gibraltar villa and Bloomfield house in Crumlin,
barony of Uppercross. In 1886 occasionally with casual acquaintances
and prospective purchasers on doorsteps, in front parlours, in third
class railway carriages of suburban lines. In 1888 frequently with
major Brian Tweedy and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy, together
and separately on the lounge in Matthew Dillon’s house in Round-
town. Onccin 1 892 and once in 1 893 with Julius Mastiansky, on both
occasions in the parlour of his (Bloom’s) house in Lombard street, west.

What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884,
1885, -1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, * 9®4 Bloom make before their
arrival at their destination?

He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual
development and experience was regrcssively accompanied by a restric-
tion of the converse domain of interindividual relations.

As in what ways?

From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one
received; existence with existence he was with any as any with any:
from existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none
perceived.

What action did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination?

628

At the housesteps of the 4th of the cquidifFcrent uneven numbers,
number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back
pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey.

Was it there?

It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had
worn on the day but one preceding.

Why was he doubly irritated?

Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had
reminded himself twice not to forget.

What were then the alternatives before the, prcmcditatcdly (respec-
tively) and inadvertently, keyless couple?

To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.

Bloom’s decision?

A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over
the area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at
the lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its
length of five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten inches
of the area pavement, and allowed his body to move freely in space by
separating himself from the railings and crouching in preparation for
the impact of the fall.

Did he fall?

By his body’s known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in
avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for
periodical selfweighing in the premises of Francis Freedman, pharma-
ceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast ot the
Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year one
thousand nine hundred and four of the Christian era (Jewish era five
thousand six hundred and sixtyfour, mohammedan era one thousand
three hundred and twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar
cycle 9, dominical letters C B, Roman indication 2, Julian period 6617,

MXMIV.

Did he rise uninjured by concussion?

Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though con-
cussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion
of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind

629

applied at its fulcrum gained retarded access to the kitchen through the
subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free
inflammable coal gas by turning on the vcntcock, lit a high flame
which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit
finally a portable candle.

What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive?

Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the trans-
parent kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 C P, a man
lighting a candle, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a
man leaving the kitchen holding a candle of i C P.

Did the man reappear elsewhere?

After a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discern-
ible througl^ the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the
halldoor. I’he halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open
space of the doorw-ay the man reappeared without his hat, with his
candle.

Did Stephen obey his sign?

Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and
followed softly along the hallway the man’s back and listed feet and
lighted candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and care-
fully down a turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of
Bloom’s l^ouse.

What did Bloom do?

He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its
flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for
Stephen with its back to the area window, the other for himself when
necessary, knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid
resintipped sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons
of best Abram coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of
Messrs Flower and M’Donald of 14 D’Olier street, kindled it at
three projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer match,
thereby releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allow-
ing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with
the oxygen of the air.

Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?

Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or

630

on two, had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary
of the college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in
the county of Kildare: of his father, Simon Dcdalus, in an unfurnished
room of his first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon
street: of his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying
sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher’s Island: of his mother Mary,
wife of Simon Dcdalus, in the kitchen of number twelve North Rich-
mond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis-Xavier 1 898 :
of the dean of studies. Father Butt, in the physics’ theatre of university
College, 16 Stephen’s green, north: of his sister Dilly (Delia) in his
father’s house in Cabra.

What did Stephen sec on raising his gaze to the height of a yard
from the fire towards the opposite wall?

Under a row of five coiled spring houscbells a curvilinear rope,
stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the
chimney pier, from which hung four smallsizcd square handkerchiefs
folded unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of
ladies’ grey hose with lisle suspender tops and feet in their habitual
position clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer
extremities and the third at their point of junction.

What did Bloom sec on the range?

. On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left
(larger) hob a black iron kettle.

What did Bloom do at the range?

He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron
kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to
let it fiow.

Did it flow?

Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic
capacity of 2,400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean
aqueduct of filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an
initial plant cost of ^5 per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown,
Glen of the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan,
a distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving
tanks, by a gradient of 250 feel to the city boundary at Eustace bridge,
upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and daily

supply of 12 i/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the sill
ot the overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and water-
works engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of the
waterworks committee, had prohibited the use of municipal w'ater for
purposes other than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility
ot recourse being had to the impotable water of the Grand and Royal
canals as in 1893) particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, not-
withstanding their ration of i 5 gallons per day per pauper supplied
through a 6 inch meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000
gallons per night by a reading of their meter on the affirmation of the
law agent of the corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby
acting to the detriment of another section of the public, selfsupporting
taxpayers, solvent, sound.

hat in water did Bloon^, waterlover, draw’er of water, watercarrier
returning to the range, admire?

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature
in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator’s projec-
tion: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific
exceeding 8,000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface
particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of
its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in
calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence
after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and
antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance
of 3 to I over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony
extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial
tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its
luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble
substances including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its
slow erosions of peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its
alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturb-
ability in lagoons and highland tarns; its gradation of colours in the
torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in
continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers
with their tributaries and transoceanic currents; gulfstream, north and
south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts,
artesian w'ells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, ground-
swells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, macl-

632

Stroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast ci^cun^tc^rc^t^ial
ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs, and latent lHinudit\', rev ealed
by rhabdomantic or hygromctric instruments and exemplified b\ the
hole in tlie wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew :
the simplic'ty of its composition, two constituent part-^ of Indrogen
with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues; its buovanev
in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in
runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard; its properties
for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its
infallibility as paradigm and paragon; its metanvorphoses as vapour,
mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its
variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and
lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches
and tidal estuaries and arms of sea; its solidity in glaciers, iccberg>,
icefloes; its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines,
dynamos, electric power stations, blcachworks, tanneries, scutchmills:
its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its
potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from
level to level; its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe)
numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity
as constituting 90% of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia
in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwatcr, stagnant
pools in the waning moon.

Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did
he return to the stillflowing tap?

To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of
Barrington’s Icmonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered (bought
thirteen hours previously for fourpcncc and still unpaid for), in fresh
cold ncvcrchanging cverchanging water and dry them, face and Ivands,
in a long redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving
roller.

What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom’s offer?

That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by imnversion or
total by submersion in cold water (his last bath having taken place in
the month of October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous
substances of glass and crystal, distrusting aquacitics of thought and
language.

633

ii.it itnpcdcd Bloom fron> giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and
prtiphylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a pre-
liminary wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with rapid
'pl.ishing ot the tacc and neck and thoracic and epigastric region in
case ot sea or river bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most
sensitive to cold being the nape, stomach and thenar or sole of foot?

riie incompatibility ot aquacitv witli the erratic originality of
genius.

What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress.^

Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric
energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the
lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed.

hich seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?

Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment
and recuperation.

W^hat concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid
by the agency of fire?

The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught
of ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyfluc, ignition was
communicated from the faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral
masses ot bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the
foliated fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn
derived their vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat
(radiant), transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diather-
manous ether. Heat (convected), a mode of motion developed by
such combustion, was constantly and increasingly conveyed from the
source of calorification to the liquid contained in the vessel, being
radiated through the uneven unpolished dark surface of the metal
iron, m part reflected, in part absorbed, in part transmitted, gradually
raising the temperature of the water from normal to boiling point, a
rise in temperature expressible as the result of an expenditure of 72
thermal units needed to raise i pound of water from co® to 212®
Fahrenheit.

What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature?

A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid
at both sides simultaneously.

634

For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so
boiled?

To shave himself.

What advantages attended shaving by night?

A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain trom
shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly
encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary
hours: quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a cleaner sensation
when awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions
and perturbations, a clattered milkean, a postman’s double knock, a
paper read, reread while lathering, rclathering the same spot, a shock,
a shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought
might cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision
plaster with precision cut and humected and applied adhered which
was to be done.

Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noise?

Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine
feminine passive active hand.

What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting
influence.^

The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed
human blood even when the end justified the means, preferring in
their natural order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteo-
pathic surgery.

What lay under exposure on the lower middle and upper shelves ol

the kitchen dresser opened by Bloom?

On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal
breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a moustache-
cup, uninverlcd. and saucer of Crown Derby, four white goldrimmed
eggeups, and open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly copper,
and a phial of aromatic violet comfits. On the middle shelf a chipped
eggeup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four conglomerated
black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtrce’s potted
meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one
Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co’s white
invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue paper, a

packet ot Epps’s soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne Lynch’s choice
tea at 2, - per lb. in a crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical canister
containing the best crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one the larger,
Spanish, entire, the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented
surface and more redolent, ajar of Irish Model Dairy’s cream, a jug
of brown crockery containing a noggin and a quarter of soured adulter-
ated niilk, converted by heat into water, acidulous serum and semi-
solidified curds, which added to the quantity subtracted for Mr Bloom’s
and .Mrs Fleming’s breakfasts made one imperial pint, the total
quantity originally delivered, two cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish
containing a slice of fresh ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of
jamjars of various sizes and proveniences.

W hat attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser?

Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets,
numbered 8 87, 8 86.

What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow?

Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction, pre-
indicati\’c of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official and
definitive result of W’hich he had read in the Evening Telegraphy late
pink edition, in the cabman’s shelter, at Butt bridge.

Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected,
been received by him?

In Bernard Kiernan’s licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain
street: in David Byrne’s licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in
O Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon’s when a dark man
had placed in his hand a throw-away (subsequently thrown away),
advertising Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion: in Lincoln place
outside the premises of F. W. Sweny and Co (Limited) dispensing
chemists, when, when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and
successively requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current
issue of the Freeman's Journal and National Press which he had been
about to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded
towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11
Leinster street, with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance
and bearing in his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language
of prediction.

636

What qualifying con5.itlcration!» allayed his perturbations?

The difticulties of interpretation since the significance ot any event
followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the
electrical discharge and of countcrcstimating against an actual loss by
failure to interpret the total sun^ of possible losses proceeding originally
from a successful interpretation.

His mood?

He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed,
he was satisfied.

What satisfied him?

To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain
to others. Light to the gentiles.

How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile?

He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps s
soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed
on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the
prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity
prescribed.

What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show
his guest?

Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of
imitation Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter,
Milliccnt (Milly), he substituted a cup identical with that of his guest
and served extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to
himself the viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his
wife Marion (Molly).

Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of

hospitality? . i j u

His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely and he

accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps’s
massproduct, the creature cocoa.

Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but
suppressed, reserving them for another and for himself on future
occasions to complete the act begun?

637

1 lie reparation ot a fissure of tlic length of i 1/2 inches in the right
side ot his guest’s jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four lady’s
handkerchicts, it and when ascertained to be in a presentable condition.

W ho drank more quickly?

Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation and
taking, from the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which
a steady How ot heat was conducted, three sips to his opponent’s one,
six to tuo, nine to three.

Wliat cerebration accompanied his frequentative act?

Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion
was engaged in menial composition he reflected on the pleasures
derived from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he
himsclt had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than
once for the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life.

Had he found their solution?

In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages,
aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text,
the answers not bearing on all points.

What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him,
potential poet, at the age of 1 1 in 1877 on the occasion of the offering
of three prizes of 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively by the Shamrocky a
weekly newspaper?

An ambition to squint
At my verses in print

Makes me hope that for these you'll find room.

If you so condescend

Then please place at the end

The name of yours truly^ L. Bloom.

Did he find four separating forces between his temporary guest and
him?

Name, age, race, creed.

What anagrams had he made on his name in youth?

Leopold Bloom

638

EUpodboniool
Molldopeloob-
Bollopedoom
Old Ollcbo, M. P.

What acrostic upon the abbreviation ot his first name had he {kinetic
poet) sent to Miss Marion Tweedy on the 14 February t888?

Foeis ojt have sung in rhyme
0 / music sweet their praise divine.

Let them hymn it nine times nine.

Dearer Jar than song or wine,

You are mine. The world is mine.

What had prevented him from completing a topical song (music by
R. G. Johnston) on the events of the past, or fixtures for the actual
years, entitled IJ Brian Boru could but come back and see old Dublin now,
commissioned by Michael Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47,
48, 49 South King street, and to be introduced into the sixth scene,
the valley of diamonds, of the second edition (30 January 1893) of
the grand annual Christmas pantomime Sinbad the Sailor (written by
Grecnleaf Whittier, scenery by George A. Jackson and Cecil Hicks,
costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan, produced by R. Shelton
26 December 1892 under the personal supervision of Mrs Michael
Gunn, ballets by Jessie Noir, harlequinade by Thomas Otto) and sung
by Nelly Bouverist principal girl?

Firstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest,
the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria (born 1820,
acceded 1837) and the posticipated opening of the new municipal
fish market; secondly, apprehension of opposition from extreme circles
on the questions of the respective visits of Their Royal Highnesses, the
duke and duchess of York (real), and of His Majesty King Brian Boru
(imaginary); thirdly, a conflict between professional etiquette and
professional emulation concerning the recent erections of the Grand
Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal in Hawkins street:
fourthly, distraction resultant from compassion for Nelly Bouverist’s
non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical expression of countenance
and concupiscence caused by Nelly Bouverist’s revelations of white
articles of non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical underclothing
while she (Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly, the difficulties

of the selection ot appropriate music and humorous allusions from
Everybody' s Book oj 'Jokes (looo pages and a laugh in every one):
sixthly, the rhymes homophonous and cacophonous, associated with
the names of the new lord mayor, Daniel Tallon, the new high sheriff,
Thomas Pile and the new solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket Barton.

What relation existed between their ages?

i6 years before in 1888 when Blooni was of Stephen’s present age
Stephen was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Stephen would be of

Bloom's present age Bloom would be 54. In 1936 when Bloom would
be 70 and Stephen 54 their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to o would
be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity
diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for. if the
proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that
to be possible, till then 1904 when Stephen was 22 Bloom would be
374 and in 1920 when Stephen would be 38, as Bloom then was,
Bloom would be 646 while in 1952 when Stephen would have attained
the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Bloom, being 1 190 years alive
having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years
the maximum antediluvian age, that of Mcthusalah, 969 years, while,
if Stephen would continue to live until he would attain that age in the
year loji A.D., Bloom would have been obliged to have been alive
83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year
81,3968. C.

What events might nullify these calculations?

The cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a
new era or calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent
extermination of the human species, inevitable but impredictable.

How many previous encounters proved their preexisting acquain-
tance?

Two. 1 he first in the lilacgardcn of Matthew Dillon's house,
Medina Villa, Kimmage road, Roundtown, in 1887, in the company
of Stephen s mother, Stephen being then of the age of 5 and reluctant
to give his hand in salutation. The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin's
hotel on a rainy Sunday in the January of 1892, in the company of
Stephen s father and Stephen's granduncle, Stephen being then 5
years older.

640

Did Bloom accept the in\itatjon to dinner given then by tlic son
and afterwards seconded bv the Jiuher?

\'ery gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with siticere appreciative
gratitude, in appreciatively grateful >incerity ol regret, he declined.

Did their conversation on the subject ot these reminiscences reveal
a third connecting link between them?

Mrs Riordan, a widow of independent means, had resided in titc
house of Stephen’s parents from i September 1888 to 29 December
1 89 1 and had also resided during the years 1 892, 1 893 and i 894 in the
City Arms Hotel owned by Elizabeth O’Dowd of 54 Prussia street
where during parts of the years 1 893 and 1 894 she had been a constant
informant of Bloom who resided also in the same hotel, being at that
time a clerk in the employment of Joseph Cuffc of 5 Smithficld tor the
superintendence of sales in the adjacent Dublin Cattle market on the
North Circular road.

Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy for her?

He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an
infirm widow of independent, if limited means, in her convalescent
bathchair with slow revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the
North Circular road opposite Mr Gavin Low’s place of business where
she had remained for a certain time scanning through his onelenscd
binocular fieldglasses unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster
bicycles, equipped with inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages,
tandems, private and hired landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes
passing from the city to the Pheenix Park and vice versa.

Why could he then support that his vigil with the greater
equanimity?

Because in middle youth he had often sat observing through a rondel
of bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with
continual changes of the thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadru-
peds, velocipedes, vehicles, passing slowly, quickly, evenly, round and
round and round the rim of a round precipitous globe.

What distinct different memories had each of her now eight years
deceased?

The older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her
suppositious wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient catarrhal

641 2T

deafness: the younger, lur lamp of colza oil before the statue of the
Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for Charles
Stewart Parnell and tor Michael Davitt, her tissue papers

Were there no means still remaining to him to achieve the rejuvena-
tion which these reminiscences divulged to a younger companion
rendered the more desirable?

1 he indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subse-
quently abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow’s Physical Strength
and How To Obtain It which, designed particularly for commercial
men engaged in sedentary occupations, were to be made with mental
concentration in front of a mirror so as to bring into play the various
families of muscles and produce successively a pleasant relaxation and
the most pleasant repristination of juvenile agility.

Had any special agility been his in earlier youth?

Though ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength and the full
circle gyration beyond his courage yet as a High School scholar he had
excelled in his stable and protracted execution of the half lever move-
ment on the parallel bars in consequence of his abnormally developed
abdominal muscles.

Did cither openly allude to their racial difference?

Neither.

What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom's
thoughts about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom and Bloom's thoughts
about Steplien s thoughts about Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen?

He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that
he knew that he knew' that he was not.

What, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective
parentages? ^

Bloom, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag (subse-
quently Rudolf Bloom) of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan,
London and Dublin and of Ellen Higgins, second daughter of Julius
Higgins (born Karoly) and Fanny Higgins (born Hcgarty); Stephen,
eldest surviving male consubstantial heir of Simon Dedalus of Cork

and Dublin and of Mary, daughter of Richard and Christina Goulding
(born Grier).

642

Had Bloom and Stephen been bapti^cd, and where and by whom,
cleric Of layman?

Bloont (three limes) bv the reverend Mr Gilmer Johnston M. A.
alone in the protestant church ot Saint Nicolas Without, Cooinbe;
by James (3’Connor, Pnilip Gilhgan and James bitzpatrick, togetlier,
under a pump in the village ot Swords; and by the re\'erend Charles
Malone C. C., in the church ol the Three Patrons, Rathgar. Stephen
(once) by the reverend Charles Malone, C. C., alone, in the churcli ot
the Three Patrons, Rathgar.

Did they find their educational careers similar?

Substituting Stephen tor Bloom Stoom would have passed succes-
sively through a dame’s school and the high school. Substituting
Bloom for Stephen Blephen would have passed successively through
the preparatory, junior, middle and senior grades of the intermediate
and through the matriculation, first arts, second arts and arts degree
courses of the royal university.

Why did Bloom refrain from stating that he had frequented the
university of life?

Because of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this observation
had or had not been already made by him to Stephen or by Stephen
to him.

«

What two temperaments did they individually represent?

The scientific. The artistic.

What proofs did Bloom adduce to prove that his tendency was

towards applied, rather than towards pure, science?

Certain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when reclining
in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his
appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once
revolutionary for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting
telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon,
the canal lock with winch and sluice, the suction pump.

Were these inventions principally intended for an improved scheme

of kindergarten? . , , , , c

Yes, rendering obsolete popguns, clastic airbladders. games ot

hazard, catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibit-

643

ing the twelve constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, minia-
ture mechanical orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to
correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap playing balls, histori-
cally costumed dolls.

What also stimulated him in his cogitations?

The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A.
James, the former by his id. bazaar at 42 George’s street, South, the
latter at his 6 1/2 d. shop and world’s fancy fair and waxwork exhibi-
tion at 30 Henry street, admission 2d., children id.; and the infinite
possibilities hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if
condensed in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum
visibility (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered)
and of magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest,
to convince, to decide.

Such as?

K. 1 1. Kino’s 1 1/-^ Trousers.

House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes.

Such as not?

Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you
receive gratis i pair of our special non-compo boots, guaranteed i
candle power. Address: Barclay and Cook, 18 Talbot Street.

Bacilikil (Insect Powder).

Veribest (Boot Blacking).

Uwantit (Combined pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew,
nailfile and pipecleaner).

Such as never?

What is home without Plumirce’s Potted Meat?

Incomplete.

With it an abode of bliss.

Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants’ quay, Dublin,
put up in 4 oz. pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti,
M. P., Rotunda Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary
notices and anniversaries of deceases. The name on the label is Plum-
tree. A plumtree in a meatpot, registered trade mark. Beware of
imitations. Pcatmot. Trumplee. Montpat. Plamtroo.

644

Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that
originality, though prodticing it> own reward, does not inxariably
conduce to success?

His own ideated and rciccted project ot an illuminated showcart,
drawn by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were
to be seated engaged in writing.

What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen?

Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. I wilight. Fire lit. In
dark corner young man seated, ^oung woman enters. Restless.
Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twi-
light. She thinks. On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks.
She writes. She sighs. Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He
comes from his dark corner. He seizes solitary paper. He holds it
tow’ards fire. Twilight. He reads. Solitary.

What?

In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen’s hotel. Queen’s hotel,
Queen’s Ho . . .

What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom?

The Queen’s Hotel, Ennis, County Clare, where Rudolph Bloom
(Rudolf Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour
unstated, in consequence of an overdose of monkshood (aconite) self-
administered in the form of a neuralgic liniment, composed of 2 parts
of aconite liniment to i of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at
10.20 a.m. on the morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical hall of
Francis Dcnnchy, 17 Church street, Ennis) after having, though not
in consequence of having, purchased at 3. 1 5 p.m. on the afternoon of
27 June 1 886 a new boater straw hat, extra smart (after having, though
not in consequence of having, purchased at the hour and in the place
aforesaid, the toxin aforesaid), at the general drapery store of James
Cullen, 4 Main street, Ennis.

Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or

intuition?

Coincidence.

Did be depict the scene verbally for his guest to sec?

He preferred himself to see another’s face and listen to another s

645

\\ords by which potential narration wai realised and kinetic tcnipera-
inent relieved.

Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated
to him, described by the narrator as A Plsgah Sight of Palestine or
The Parable oj the Plums

It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but
existent by implication, to w'hich add essays on various subjects or
moral apothegnis (c. g. My Favourite Hero or Procrastination is tht
Thiej of Time) composed during schoolyears, seemed to him to contain
in itself and in conjunction with the personal equation certain possi-
bilities of financial, social, personal and sexual success, w-hether specially
collected and selected as model pedagogic themes (of cent per cent
merit) for the use of preparatory and junior grade students or con-
tributed in printed form, following the precedent of Philip Bcaufoy
or Doctor Dick or Hcblon’s Studies in Blue^ to a publication of certified
circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual stimula-
tion for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of successful
narrative and confidently auguratiye of successful achievement, during
the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer solstice
on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday, 21 June (S.
Aloysius Conzaga), sunrise 3.33 a. m., sunset 8.29 p. m.

Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other
frequently engaged his mind?

What to do with our wives.

What had been his hypothetical singular solutions?

Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spillikins, cup and
ball, nap, spoil five, bezique, tw'entyfivc, beggar my neighbour,
draughts, chess or backgammon); embroidery, darning or knitting for
the policcaided clothing society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar,
piano and flute, guitar and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope address-
ing; biweekly visits to variety entertainments: commercial activity as
pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress in
a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine satisfaction of
erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically
controlled: social vising, at regular infrequent prevented intervals and
with regular frequent preventive superintendence, to and from female

646

acquaintances of recognised respectability in the vicinity; courses ot
evening instruction specially designed to render liberal instruction
agreeable.

What instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined
him in favour of the lastmcntioncd (ninth) solution?

In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of
paper with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and
Irish and Hebrew characters. She had interrogated constantly at
varying intervals as to the correct method of writing the capital initial
of the name of a city in Canada. Quebec. She understood little of
political complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In
calculating the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital
aid. After completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned
the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment exposed to the
corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual poly-
syllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by false
analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike hoses), alias (a
mcdacious person mentioned in sacred Scripture).

What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these
and such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things?

The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all
balances, proved true by construction. The counterbalance of her
proficiency of judgment regarding one person, proved true by

experiment.

How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative
ignorance?

Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open
at a certain page: by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily,
latent knowledge: by open ridicule in her presence of some absent
other’s ignorant lapse.

With what success had he attempted direct instruction?

She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with
interest, comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater
difficulty remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremem-

bered, rerepeated with error.

647

WIkii system had proved more elective?

Indirect suggestion implicating self-interest.

Example?

She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she
disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought
new hat with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat.

Accepting the analogy implied in his guest’s parable w'hich examples
of postexilic eminence did he adduce?

Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonidcs,
author of More Neubkim (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendels-
sohn of such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses
(Mendelssohn) there arose none like Moses (Maimonidcs).

What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom concerning
a fourth seeker of pure truth, by name .Aristotle, mentioned, with
permission, by Stephen?

That tlie seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philo-
sopher, name uncertain.

Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of
a selected or rejected race mentioned?

Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philo-
sopher), Mendoza (pugilist), P'erdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist).

What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish
languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts
by guest to host and by host to guest?

By Stephen: sail, suil^ sail arun, sail go siocair agus, sail go cutn (walk,
walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care).

By Bloom: Kijdoch, harimon rakatejeh mbaad I'zamatejch (thy
temple amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate).

How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both
languages made in substantiation of the oral comparison?

On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior literary style,,
entitled Sweets oj S'tn (produced by Bloom and so manipulated that its *
front cover came in contact with the surface of the table) with a pencil '
(supplied by Stephen) Stephen wrote the Irish characters for gee, eh,

648

dee, cm, simple and modified, and Bloom in turn wrote the Hebrew
characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the absence of mem) a substi-
tuted goph, explaining their arithmetical values as ordinal and cardinal
numbers, videlicet 3, i, 4 and 100.

Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the
extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical?

Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence
and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary.

What points of contact existed between these languages and between
the peoples who spoke them?

The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic
and servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been
taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the seminary
instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor of
Israel, and ascendant of Hcbcr and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland:
their archeological, genealogical, hagiographical, cxegeiical, homi-
lectic, toponomastic, historical and religious literatures comprising the
works of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and Ghcmara)
Massor, Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymotc,
Garland of Howth, Book of Kells: their dispersal, persecution, survival
and revival: the isolation of their synagogical and ecclesiastical rites in
ghetto (S. Mary’s Abbey) and masshousc (Adam and Eve’s tavern);
the proscription of their national costumes in penal laws and Jewish
dress acts: the restoration in Chanan David of Zion and the possibility
of Irish political autonomy or devolution.

What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that
multiple, ethnically irreductible consummation?

Kotod halejwaw pnimah
Nejesch, jehudiy homijah.

Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich?

In consequence of defective mncmotcchnic.

How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency?

By a periphrastic version of the general text.

649

In what common study did their mutual reflections merge?

The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epi-
graphic hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the
anticipation of modern stenography and telegraphic code in the
cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostatc
ogham writing (Celtic).

Did the guest comply with his host’s request?

Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters.

What was Stephen’s auditive sensation?

He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the
accumulation of the past.

What was Bloom’s visual sensation?

He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a
future.

What were Stephen’s and Bloom’s quasisimultancous volitional
quasisensations of concealed identities?

Visually, Stephen’s; The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted
by Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius
Monachus as leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair.

Auditively, Bloom’s: The traditional accent of the ecstasy of
catastrophe.

What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and
with what exemplars?

In the church, Roman, Anglican, or Nonconformist: exemplars, the
very reverend John Conmee S. J., the reverend T. Salmon, D. D.,
provost of Trinity college. Dr Alexander J. Dowic. At the bar,
English or Irish: exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C., Rufus Isaacs,
K. C. On the stage, modern or Shakespearean exemplars, Charles
Wyndham, high comedian, Osmond Tearic (•{■ 1901), exponent of
Shakespeare.

Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a
strange legend on an allied theme?

650

Reassuringly, their place where none could hear them talk being
secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for suUolid
residual sediment of a mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus
cream plus cocoa, having been consumed.

Recite the first (major) part of this chanted legend?

Little Harry Hughes and hts schooljello^s all
Went out jor to flay ball.

And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played
He drove it o'er the Jew's g irden wall.

And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played
He broke the Jew's windows all.

fu

l lTPo'"^

U/a4(* ♦<€. *>Uw*'*r ft* ^su3«t*

ft* vIy jliTi*" ^ Raal|

tu jMt OM . Ub Mote fU ffudt *

How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part?

With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew, he heard with pleasure and
saw the unbroken kitchen window.

Recite the second part (minor) of the legend.

Then out came the Jew's daughter
And she all dressed in green.

"Come hacky come backy you pretty little boyy
And play your ball again."

“/ cant come back and I won't come back
Without my schooljellows ally
For ij my master he did hear
He'd make it a sorry ball."

She took him by the lilywhite hand ’

And led him along the hall
Until she led him to a room
Where none could hear him call.

She took a penknife out of her pocket
And cut o£ his little heady
And now he'll play his ball no more
For he lies among the dead.

Ti^,. ccuam. Ha Qui t iUi

:^^ViTT7

CUMt 4*b|C ftltMlf

1|Uj. ' ■ .1:^ ' iTu ■ 1

VZi *fouA Cadi yo*** ^

How did the father of Millicent receive this second part?

652

With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a
Jew’s daughter, all dressed in green.

Condense Stephen’s commentary.

One of all, the least of all, is the viaim predestined. Once by
inadvertence, twice by design he challenges his destiny. It comes
when he is abandoned and challenges him reluctant and, as an appari-
tion of hope and youth holds him unresisting. It leads him to a strange
habitation, to a secret infidel apartment, and there, implacable,
immolates him, consenting.

Why was the host (victim predestined) sad?

He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him
should by him not be told.

Why was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still?

In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy.

Why was the host (secret infidel) silent?

He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder:
the incitation of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the
propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of
opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of
atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism,
hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism.

From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not

totally immune? . . , • j u-.

From hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his

sleeping apartment: more than once, waking, he had been for an
indefinite time incapable of moving or uttering sounds, brom
somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and
crawled in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained its
destination, there, curled, unheated, in night attire had lam, sleeping.

Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself m any
member of his family?

Twice, in Holies street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Milliccnt
(Milly) at the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered in sleep an exclamation

of terror and had replied to the interrogations of two figures in night
attire with a vacant mute expression.

What other infantile memories had he of her?

I 5 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause
and lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with
shocks her moneybox; counted his three free moneypenny buttons
one, tloo, tlee; a doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away; blond, born of two
dark, she had blond ancestry, remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann
Hainau, Austrian army, proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvcy,
British navy.

What endemic characteristics were present?

Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct
line of lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant
intervals to its most distant intervals.

What memories had he of her adolescence?

She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke’s
lawn entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to
make and take away her photographic image (objection not stated).
On the South Circular road in the company of Elsa Potter, followed
by an individual of sinister aspect, she went half way down Stamer
street and turned abruptly back (reason of change not stated). On the
vigil of the 1 5th anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter from
Mullingar, county Westmeath, making a brief allusion to a local
student (faculty and year not stated).

Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him?

Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped.

What second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him
similarly if differently?

A temporary departure of his cat.

Why similarly, why differently?

Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new
male (Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). Differently,
because of different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the
habitation.

654

In other respects were their differences similar?

In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in
unexpectedness.

Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon
it for her (cf. ncckarching cat). Moreover, on the free surface of the
lake in Stephen’s green amid inverted reflections of trees her uncom-
mented spit, describing concentric circles of waterrings, indicated bv
the constancy of its permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish
(cf. mousewatching cat). Again, in order to remember the date,
combatants, issue and consequences of a famous military engagement
she pulled a plait of her hair (cf. carNvashing cat). Furthermore silly
Milly, she dreamed of having had an unspoken unremembered
conversation with a horse whose name had been Joseph ''’^om
(which) she had offered a tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had
appeared to have accepted (cf. hearthdreaming cat). Hence in
passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in uncxpecte ness,
their differences were similar.

In what way had he utilised gifts i) an owl, 2) a clock, given as

matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her?

As object lessons to explain: i) the nature and habits of oviparous
animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of vision,
the secular process of imbalsamation; 2) the principle of the pendulum,
exemplified in bob, wheelgcar and regulator, the translation m Krms
of human or social regulation of the various positions clockwise ot
movable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude o t c
recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour, when the longer and
the shorter indicator were at the same angle of inclination, viddictt,
55/11 minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical progression.

In what manners did she reciprocate? . , . , • . j

She remembered; on the 27th anniversary of his birth she presented
to him a breakfast moustachecup of imitation crown Derby porcelain
ware. She provided: at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases
had been made by him not for her she showed herself attentive to his

necessities, anticipating his desires. She admired, a natura P
mcnon having been explained by him not for her she expressed the

655

iinnu'diate desire to possess without gradual acquisition a fraction of his
science, the nioicty, the quarter, a thousandth part.

What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnam-
bulist, make to Stephen, noctanibulist?

7 o pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday (proper)
and Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment
immediately above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the
sleeping apartment of his host and hostess.

What various advantages would or might have resulted from a
prolongation of such extemporisation?

For the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the
host: rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the
hostess: disintegration of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian
pronunciation.

Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest
and a liostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent
eventuality of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew’s
daughter.^

Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother
through daughter.

To w'hat inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest
return a monosyllabic negative answer?

If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at
Sydney Parade railway station, 14 October 1903.

What inchoate corollary statement w^as consequently suppressed by
the host?

A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the inter-
ment of Mrs Mary Dedalus, born Goulding, 26 June 1903, vigil of
the anniversary of the decease of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag),

Was the proposal of asylum accepted?

Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined.

What exchange of money took place between host and guest?

656

The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money
{^i. 7s. o.), one pound seven shillings, advanced by the latter to the

former.

What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modi-
fied, declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed?

To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place the
residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal instruc-
tion, place the residence of the instructress. To inaugurate a series of
static, semislatic and peripatetic intellectual dialogues, places the
residence of both speakers (if both speakers were resident in the same
place), the Ship hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street (W. and
E. Connery, proprietors), the National Library of Ireland, 10 Kildare
street, the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 3 i Holies street, a
public garden, the vicinity of a place of worship, a conjunction of two
or more public thoroughfares, the point of bisection of a right line
drawn between their residences (if both speakers were resident in
different places).

What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these
mutually sclfexcluding propositions?

The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert
Henglcr’s circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive
particoloured clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring
to a place in the auditorium where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had
publicly declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Bloom) was his
(the clown’s) papa. The imprcvidibility of the future: once in the
summer of 1898 he (Bloom) had marked a florin (2s.) with three
notches on the milled edge and tendered it in payment of an account
due to and received by J. and T. Davy, family grocers, i Charlemont
Mall, Grand Canal, for circulation on the waters of civic finance, for
possible, circuitous or direct, return.

Was the clown Bloom’s son?

No.

Had Bloom’s coin returned?

Never.

Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?

657 2t;

Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired
to amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice
and international animosity.

He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminat-
ing these conditions?

There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as
distinct from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the
necessity of destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful
character of the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of
birth and death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particu-
larly) human females extending from the age of puberty to the meno-
pause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very
painful maladies and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy
and congenital criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cata-
clysms which make terror the basis of human mentality: seismic
upheavals the epicentres of which are located in densely populated
regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis,
from infancy through maturity to decay.

Why did he desist from speculation?

Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other
more acceptable phenomena in place of the less acceptable phenomena
to be removed.

Did Stephen participate in his dejection?

He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding
syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious ration^
reagent between a micro- and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed
upon the incertitude of the void.

Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom?

Not verbally. Substantially.

What comforted his misapprehension?

That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically
from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.

In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was

658

the exodus from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation
effected?

Lighted Candle in Stick borne by

Bloom.

Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by

Stephen.

With what intonation stento of what commemorative psalm?

The 113th, modus peregrinus: In txitu Israel de Egypto: domus

Jacoh de poputo barbaro.

What did each do at the door of egress?

Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his
head.

For what creature w-as the door of egress a door of ingress?

For a cat.

What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the
guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage
from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?

The hcaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to

his companion of various constellations?

Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible
in incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite latti^nous
scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by Jtn
observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 It
deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sinus
(alpha in Canis Major) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles)
distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet* 0
Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes; of Orion with be t an
sextuple sun theta and nebula in which loo of our solar systems could
be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in
100 1 : of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hcrcu es. o
the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in rca ity ever
moving from immeasurably remote cons to infinitely remote uturcs in

659

comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human
life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.

Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast.^

Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the
earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences con-
cealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and
mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the
incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules
contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the
universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies,
themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each,
in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each
was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies,
dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if
the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never
reached.

Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?

Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the
problem of the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence
of a number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such
magnitude and of so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the glh power
of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes
of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper
would have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete talc of
its printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of
thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds
of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every
scries containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the
utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers.

Did he find the problem of the inhabitability of the planets and their
satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and
moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution?

Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human
organism, normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of
19 tons, when elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial
atmosphere suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, accord-

660

ing as the line of demarcation between troposphere and statosphcrc
was approximated, from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and
vertigo, when proposing this problem for solution he had conjectured
as a working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a
more adaptable and differently anatomically constructed race of beings
might subsist othcrw'isc under Martian, Mercurial, Vcncral, Jovian,
Saturnian, Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions,
though an apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with
finite differences resulting similar to the whole and to one another
would probably there as here remain inaltcrably and inalienably
attached to vanities, to vanities of vanities and all that is vanity.

And the problem of possible redemption?

The minor was proved by the major.

Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered?

The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white,
yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy: their
magnitudes revealed up to and including the yth: their positions: the
waggoner’s star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular
cinctures of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the
interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous
discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Lc Verrier, Hersche,
Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of
distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite
pressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptiwl egressiye an
reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin o
meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the
birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric
showers about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (m^yr,
10 August): the monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the
old moon in her arms: the posited influence of celestial on human
bodies: the appearance of a star ( i st magnitude) of exceeding
dominating by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by t e
collision and amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous
exsuns) about the period of the birth of William Shakespeare over e ta
in the recumbent neversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star
(2nd magnitude) of similar origin but lesser brilliancy which had
appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of the Corona

66 1

Scptentrionalis about the period of the birth of Leopold Bloom and of
other stars of (presumably) similar origin which had (effectively or
presumably) appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of
Andromeda about the period of the birth of Stephen Dedalus, and in
and from the constellation of Auriga some years after the birth and
death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in and from other constellations
some years before or after the birth or death of other persons: the
attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to
emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged
creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence
of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.

His (Bloom’s) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and
allowing for possible error?

That it was not a hcaventree, not a hcavengrot, not a heavenbeast,
not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known
method from the known to the unknown: an infinity, renderablc
equally finite by the suppositious probable apposition of one or more
bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of
illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which
possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its future spectators had
entered actual present existence.

Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?
Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the
delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection
invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the
satellite of their planet.

Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological
influences upon sublunary disasters?

It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the
nomenclamre employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to
verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the sea
of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.

What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon
and woman?

H^r antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian gcncra-

662

tions: her nocturnal predominance: her satclUtic dependence: her
luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising, and
setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the torced invari-
ability of her aspect; her indeterminate response to inaflirmative
interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power
to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to
incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage,
the terribility of her isolated dominant in^placable resplendent pro-
pinquity; her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her
light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her
arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when
invisible.

What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom s, who attracted

Stephen’s gaze? , , r

In the second storey (rerc) of his (Bloom s) house the light oi a

paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller

blind supplied by Frank O’Hara, window blind, curtain pole and

revolving shutter manufacturer, i6 Aungier street.

How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible person, his wife
Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?

With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with
subdued affection and admiration: with description: with impediment:

with suggestion.

Both then were silent? r. • i

Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal

flesh of theirhisnothis fcllowfaccs.

Were they indefinitely inactive? , , c c u

At Stephen’s suggestion, at Bloom’s instigation both, first Stephen,

then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs

of micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circutnposi-

tion, their gazes, first Bloom’s, then Stephen’s, elevated to the projected

luminous and semiluminous shadow.

Similarly?

The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations

663

were dissimilar: Bloom's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of
the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter who in his ultimate year
at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of
greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the institu-
tion, 2 I o scholars: Stephen's higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate
hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption an
insistent vesical pressure.

What different problems presented themselves to each concerning
the invisible audible collateral organ of the other.^

To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reacti-
vity, dimension, sanitarincss, pclosity. To Stephen; the problem of
the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised (ist January, holiday of
obligation to hear mass and abstain from unnecessary servile work)
and the problem as to whether the divine prepuce, the carnal bridal
ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic church, conserved in
Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of

latria accorded to the abscission of such divine excrescences as hair and
toenails.

What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?

A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firma-
nient from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup
of the Tress of Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo.

How did the centripetal remaincr afford egress to the centrifugal
departer? ®

By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an
unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and
turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple
pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and
revealing an aperture for free egress and free ingress.

How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?

Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its
base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and

torming any angle less than the sum of two right angles.

What sound accornpanied the union of their tangent, the disunion
of their (respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands?

664

The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the
bells in the church of Saint George.

What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard?

By Stephen:

Lihata rutilantium. Turma drcumdet.
lubilantium t( virginum. Chorus exc 'tp 'iat.

By Bloom:

Heighot heigho,

HeighOy heigho.

Where were the several members of the company which with Blootit
that day at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandyn^ounfin

the south to Glasncvin in the north?

Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dcdalus
(in bed), Tom Kcrnan (in bed), Ned Lambert (in bed), Joe Hynes
(in bed), John Henry Menton (in bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed),
Patsy Dignam (in bed), Paddy Dignam (in the grave).

Alone, what did Bloom hear?

The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn
earth, the double vibration of a jew’’s harp in the resonant lane.

Alone, what did Bloom feel?

The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing
point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Reaumur: the
incipient intimations of proximate dawm.

Of what did bcllchimc and handiouch and footstep and loncchill
remind him?

Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct.
Percy Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan
(phthisis, Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drown-
ing, Dublin Bay), Philip Moisei (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael
Hart (phthisis. Mater Misericordi® hospital), Patrick Dignam (apop-
lexy, Sandymount).

665

hat prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain?

1 he disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, the
apparition of a new solar disk.

Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena?

Once, in 1887 after a protracted performance of charades in the
house of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the
apparition of the diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze
turned in the direction of .Mizrach, the east.

He remembered the initial paraphenomena?

More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at
various points, avinc music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer, the
visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the first
golden hmb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon.

Did he remain?

With deep inspiration he returned, rctraversing the garden, re-
entering the passage, rcclosing the door. With brief suspiration he
reassumed the candle, rcascended the stairs, reapproached the door of
the front room, hallfloor, and reentered.

What suddenly arrested his ingress.^

The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came
into contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but
sensible fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in
consequence of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered.

Describe the alterations effected
furnitures?

in the disposition of the articles of

A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from
opposite the door to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union
Jack (an alteration which he had frequently intended to execute): the
blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed
opposite the door in the place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the
walnut sideboard (a projecting angle of which had momentarily
arrested his ingress) had been moved from its position beside the door
to a more advantageous but more perilous position in front of the door:
two chairs had been moved from right and left of the ingleside to the

666

position originally occupied by the blue and white checker inlaid
majolicatopped tabic.

Describe them.

One: a squat stuffed easychair with stout arnis extended and back
slanted to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an
irregular fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply
upholstered seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing discolouration.
The other: a slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane curves, placed
directly opposite the former, its frame from top to scat and from scat
to base being varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle of
white plaited rush.

What significances attached to these two chairs?

Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of circumstan-
tial evidence, of testimonial supermancncc.

What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboar^

A vertical piano (Cadby) wdth exposed keyboard, its closed coffin
supporting a pair of long yellow ladies’ gloves and an emerald ashtray
containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and
two discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music
in the key of G natural for voice and piano of Love s Old Su’eet Song
(words by G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by
Madam Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page NNuth the filial
indications ad libitum Jorte, pedal, animate, sustained, pedal, nttrando,

close.

With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these

(vith strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right
temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focusing his gaze on a
large dull passive and slender bright active: with solicitation, bending
and downturning the upturned rugfringe; with amusement, re-
membering Dr Malachi Mulligan’s scheme of colour containing tl
gradation of green: with pleasure, repeating the words and
let and perceiving through various channels of *fj|ernal J, .

consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion o g

discolouration.

667

His next proceeding?

From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black
diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on
a small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the
mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus
(illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined
it superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the candle-
flame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the latter
reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin of the
candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to
facilitate total combustion.

What followed this operation?

That truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano
emitted a vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental
incense.

What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the
mantelpiece?

A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of
4.46 a.m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew
Dillon: a dwarf tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bell-
shade, matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle; an embalmed
owl, matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper.

What interchanges of looks took place between these three objects

and Bloom?

•

In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of
the dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before
the mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear
melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom
while Bloom with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassion-
ated gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline
Doyle.

What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted
his attention?

The image of a solitary (ipsorclativc) mutable (aliorelativc) man.

668

Why solitary (ipsorclativc)?

Brothert and sisUn had he none,

}'(/ that man's father was h:s grandfather s son»

Why mutable (aliorelativc)?

From infancy to maturity he had resembled h»s maternal pro-
creatrix. From maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his

paternal creator.

What final visual impression was communicated to him by the

The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly
arranged and not in the order of their common letters with scintillating

titles on the two bookshelves opposite.

Catalogue these books.

Thom's Dublin Post Office Directory, \%%t,

Denis Florence M'Carthy’s Poetical Works (copper beechlcaf book-
mark at p. 5). ,

Shakespeare’s Works (dark crimson morocco, goldtoolcd).

binding).

The Child's Guide {b\Me doth). ^liahtlv

men m Were Beys by William O’Brien M. P. (gr«n cloth, slightly
faded, envelope bookmark at p. 217).

Thoughts from Spinoza {xmcoQX\\c^thct).

T/ie Story oj the Heaven, by Sir Robert

Ellis’s Three Trip, to Madagascar (brown cloth, title o

The Stark-Munro Utter, by A. Conan Doyle, P^P" ^ ‘ 7 ^ 7 .

of Dublin Public Library, io 6 Capel Syeet, lent a t M y ( h
sun Eve) 1904. due + June 1904. . 3 days overdue (black cloth

binding, bearing white letlernumber ticket).

Voyages in China by ‘Viator’ (recovered with brown paper, red

u, ^

Philosophy of the Talmud (sewn pamphlet). annotations.

Lockhart’s i/ 7 e of Napoleon (cover wanting, marginal annotations.

t^nimising^ric/oriesfaggrandUing defeats of the protagonist).

669

Sollund Haben by Gustav Frcytag (black boards, Gothic characters,
ciprette coupon bookmark at p. 24).

Hozicr s History oj the Russo-Turkish War (brown cloth, 2 volumes,
with gummed label. Garrison Library, Governor’s Parade,
Gibraltar, on verso of cover).

Laurence Bloomjield in Ireland by William AlUngham (second edi-
tion, green cloth, gilt trefoil design, previous owner’s name on
recto of flyleaf erased).

A Handbook oJ Astronomy (cover, brown leather, detached, 5 plates,
antique letterpress long primer, author’s footnotes nonpareil,
marginal clues brevier, captions small pica).

The Hidden Lije oJ Christ (black boards).

In the Track of the Sun (yellow cloth, titlepage missing, recurrent
title intestation).

Physical Strength and How to Obtain It by Eugen Sandow (red
cloth).

Short but yet Plain Elements of Geometry written in French by F.
Ignat. Pardies and rendered into Englijh by John Harris D. D.
London, printed for R. Knaplock at the Bijhop’s Head
MDCCXI, with dedicatory epi/tle to his worthy friend Charles
Cox, e/quirc. Member of Parliament for the burgh of Southwark
and having ink calligraphed statement on the flyleaf certifying
that the book was the property of Michael Gallagher, dated this
loth day of May 1822 and reque/ting the per/on who should

should be lojt or go a/tray, to rejtore it to
Michael Gallagher, carpenter, Dufery Gate, Enni/corthy, county

Wicklow, the fine/t place in the world.

What reflections occupied his mind during the process of reversion of
the inverted volumes?

The necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its
place; the deficient appreaation of literature possessed by females: the
incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella
inclined in a closestool: the insecurity of hiding any secret document
behind, beneath or between the pages of a book.

Which volume was the largest in bulk?
Hoaicr’s History of -the Russo-TurHsh War,

670

What among other data did the second volume of the work in
question contain?

The name of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered
by a decisive officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy (remembered).

Why, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the W’ork in question?

Firstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic; secondly, because after
an inter\'al of amnesia, when seated at the central table, about to
consult the work in question, he remembered by mnemotechnic the
name of the military engagement, Plevna.

What caused him consolation in his sitting posture?

The candour, nudity, pose, tranquillity, youth, grace, sex, counsel
of a statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus
purchased by auction from P. A. W’rcn, 9 Bachelor’s Walk.

What caused him irritation in his sitting posture?

Inhibitory pressure of collar (size 17) and waistcoat (5 buttons),
two articles of clothing superfluous in the costume of mature males
and inelastic to alterations of mass by expansion.

How was the irritation allayed?

He removed his collar, with contained black necktie and collapsible
stud, from his neck to a position on the left of the table. He unbuttoned
successively in reversed direction waistcoat, trousers, shirt and vest
along the medial line of irregular incrispated black hair extending in
triangular convergence from the pelvic basin over the circumference
of the abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along the medial line of nodes
to the intersection of the sixth pectoral vertebr®, thence produced
both ways at right angles and terminating in circles described about
two equidistant points, right and left, on the summits of the mammary
prominences. He unbraced successively each of six minus one braced
trouser buttons, arranged in pairs, of which one incomplete.

What involuntary actions followed?

He compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent to a
cicatrice in the left infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting
from a sting inflicted 2 weeks and 3 days previously (23 May 1904)
bv a bee. He scratched imprecisely with his right hand, though in-

671

sensible of prurition, various points and surfaces of his partly exposed,
wholly abluted skin. He inserted his left hand into the left lower
pocket of his waistcoat and extracted and replaced a silver coin
(i shilling), placed there (presumably) on the occasion (17 October
1 903) of the interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade.

Compile the budget for 16 June 1904.

Debit

1 -

$.

d.

1 Pork kidney

0.

0.

3

I Copy Freeman's "Journal

0.

0.

I

I Bath and gratification

0.

I.

6

Tramfarc

0.

0.

I

I In Memoriam Patrick
Dignam

0.

5 -

0

2 Banbury cakes .

o.

0.

I

I Lunch

o*

0*

7

I Renewal fee for book .

0«

I«

0

I Packet notepaper and
envelopes ....

o.

0.

2

I Dinner and gratification

o*

2.

0

I Postal order and stamp

0*

2.

8

Tramfare

0.

0.

1

I Pig’s Foot ....

0.

0.

4

1 Sheep’s Trotter

0.

0.

3

I Cake Fry’s plain choco-
late

0.

0.

I

I Square soda bread

0.

0.

4

I Coffee and bun

0,

0,

4

Loan (Stephen Dedalus)
refunded ....

1.

7 -

0

Balance .

0.

17-

s

L

1 .

19.

3

Credit

C- s. d.

Cash in hand . . o. 4. 9

Commission reed. Free-
man's 'Journal . . . i. 7. 6

Loan (Stephen Dedalus) i. 7. o

/i-a- *9- 3

Did the process of divestiture continue.?

Sensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he extended
his foot to one side and observed the creases, protuberances and salient
points caused by foot pressure in the course of walking repeatedly in
several different directions, then, inclined, he disnoded the iaceknots,
unhooked and loosened the laces, took off each of his two boots for the
second time, detached the partially moistened right sock through the
fore part of which the nail of his great toe had again effracted, raised

672

his right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic sock suspender,
took off his right sock, placed his unclothed right fool on the margin
of the seat of his chair, picked at and gently lacerated the protruding
part of the great toenail, raised the part lacerated to his nostrils and
inhaled the odour of the quick, then with satisfaction threw away the
lacerated unguical fragment.

Why with satisfaction?

Because the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of
other unguical fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Bloom,
pupil of Mrs Ellis’s juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of
brief genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation.

In what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambi-
tions now coalesced?

Not to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough
English, or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient
number of acres, roods and perches, statute land measure (valuation
^42), of grazing turbary surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodgc
and carriage drive nor, on the other hand, a tcrracchouse or semi-
detached villa, described as Rus in Urbe or Qui si Sana, but to purchase
by private treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped 2 storey
dwellinghouse of southerly aspect, surmounted by vane and lightning
conductor, connected with the earth, with porch covered by parasitic
plants (ivy or Virginia creeper), halldoor, olive green, with smart
carriage finish and neat doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at
eaves and gable, rising, if possible, upon a gentle eminence with
agreeable prospect from balcony with stone pillar parapet over
unoccupied and unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing in
5 or 6 acres of its own ground, at such a distance from the nearest
public thoroughfare as to render its houselights visible at night above
and through a quickset hornbeam hedge of topiary cutting, situate at
a given point not less than i statute mile from the periphery of the
metropolis, within a time limit of not more than 5 minutes from tram
or train line (c. g., Dundrum, south, or Sutton, north, both localities
equally reported by trial to resemble the terrestrial poles in being
favourable climates for phthisical subjects), the premises to be held
under feefarmgrant, lease 999 years, the messuage to consist of i
drawingroom with baywindow (2 lancets), thermometer affixed, i

sitiingroom, 4 bedrooms, 2 servant’s rooms, tiled kitchen with close
range and scullery, lounge hall fitted with linen wallpresses, fumed
oak sectional bookcase containing the Encyclopaedia Britannica and
New Century Dictionary, transverse obsolete medieval and oriental
weapons, dinner gong, alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite auto-
matic telephone receiver with adjacent directory, handtufted
Axminster carpet with cream ground and trellis border, loo table with
pillar and claw legs, hearth with massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel
chronometer clock, guaranteed timekeeper with cathedral chime,
barometer with hygrographic chart, comfortable lounge settees and
corner fitments, upholstered in ruby plush with good springing and
sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen and cuspidors (club style,
rich winecoloured leather, gloss renewable with a minimum of labour
by use of linseed oil and vinegar) and pyramidically prismatic central
chandelier lustre, bentwood perch with a fingertame parrot (expur-
gated language), embossed mural paper at lo/- per dozen with
transverse swags of carmine floral design and top crown frieze, stair-
case, three continuous flights at successive right angles, of varnished
cleargrained oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and handrail, with
steppedup panel dado, dressed with camphorated wax, bathroom, hot
and cold supply, reclining and shower: water closet on mezzanine
provided with opaque singlepanc oblong window, tipup seat, bracket
lamp, brass ticrod brace, armrests, footstool and artistic oleograph on
inner face of door: ditto, plain: servants’ apartments with separate
sanitary and hygienic necessaries for cook, general and betweenmaid
(salary, rising by biennial unearned increments of ^2, with compre-
hensive fidelity insurance annual bonus (^(^i) and retiring allowance
(based on the 65 system) after 30 years’ service), pantry, buttery,
larder, refrigerator, outoffices, coal and wood cellcragc with winebin
(still and sparkling vintages) for distinguished guests, if entertained to
dinner (evening dress), carbon monoxide gas supply throughout.

What additional attractions might the grounds contain?

As addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass summer-
house with tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical manner, a
rockery with waterspray, a beehive arranged onhumanc principles, oval
flowerbeds in rectangular grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of scarlet
and chrome tulips, blue scillas, crocuses, polyanthus, sweet William,
sweet pea, lily of the valley, (bulbs obtainable from sir James W.

674

Mackey (Limited) [wholesale and retail] seed and bulb merchant
and nurseryman, agent for chemical manures, 23 Sackvillc street,
upper), an orchard, kitchen garden and vinery, protected against
illegal trespassers by glasstopped mural enclosures, a lumbershed with
padlock for various inventoried implements.

As?

Eeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone,
clodcrusher, swatheturncr, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth
rake, washing clogs, hayledder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot,
brush, hoe and so on.

What improvements might be subsequently introduced?

A rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, 2
hammocks (lady’s and gentlenian^s), a sundial shaded and sheltered
by laburnum or lilac trees, an exotically harmonically accorded
Japanese tinkle gatcbell affixed to left lateral gatepost, a capacious
waterbutl, a lawnmower with side delivery and grassbox, a lawn-
sprinkler with hydraulic hose.

What facilities of transit were desirable?

When ckybound frequent connection by train or tram from their
respective intermediate station or terminal. When countrybound
velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar
attached, or draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart
phaeton with good working solidungular cob (roan gelding, I4h).

What might be the name of this erigible or erected residence?

Bloom Cottage. Saint Leopold’s. Flowerville.

Could Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresee Bloom of Flowerville?

In loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price 8/6, and
useful garden boots with clastic gussets and watcringcan, planting
aligned young firtrccs, syringing, pruning, staking, sowing hayseed,
trundling a wccdladcn wheelbarrow without excessive fatigue at sunset
amid the scent of newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying
wisdom, achieving longevity.

What syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously possible?

675

Snapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore
relative to various amatory and superstitious practices, contemplation
of the celestial constellations.

What lighter recreations?

Outdoor: garden and fieldwork, cycling on level macadamised
causeways, ascents of moderately high hills, natation in secluded fresh
water and unmolested river boating in secure wherry or light curricle
with kedge anchor on reaches free from weirs and rapids (period of
estivation), vcspertinal perambulation or equestrian circumprocession
with inspection of sterile landscape and contrastingly agreeable
cottager’s fires of smoking peat turves (period of hibernation). Indoor
discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal
problems: lecture of unexpurgated exotic erotic masterpieces: house
carpentry with toolbox containing hammer, awl, nails, screws, tintacks,
gimlet, tweezers, bullnose plane and turnscrew.

Might he become a gentleman farmer of field produce and live
stock?

Not impossibly, with i or 2 stripper cows, i pike of upland hay and
requisite farming implements, c. g., an end-to-end churn, a turnip
puiper etc.

What would be his civic functions and social status among the
county families and landed gentry?

Arranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical order,
that of gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and at the zenith
of his career, resident magistrate or justice of the peace with a family
crest and coat of arms and appropriate classical motto {Semper paratus)^
duly recorded in the court directory (Bloom, Leopold P,, M. P.,
P. C., K. P., L. L. D. honoris causa, Bloomville, Dundrum) and
mentioned in court and fashionable intelligence (Mr and Mrs Leopold
Bloom have left Kingstown for England).

What course of action did he outline for himself in such capacity?

A course that lay between undue clemency and excessive rigour: the
dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary classes, incessantly
rearranged in terms of greater and lesser social inequality of unbiassed
homogeneous indisputable justice, tempered with mifigants of the

676

widest possible latitude but exactable to the uttermost farthing with
confiscation of estate, real and per^jonal, to the crown. Loyal to the
highest constituted power in the llnd, actuated by an innate love of
rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance of public order, the
repression of many abuses though not of all simultaneously (every
measure of reform or retrenchment being a preliminary solution to be
contained by fluxion in the final solution), the upholding of the letter
of the law (common, statute and la\V merchant) against all traversers in
covin and trespassers acting in contravention of bylaws and regulations,
all rcsuscitators (by trespass and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville
rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund instigators of international
persecution, all perpetuators of international animosities, all menial
molcstors of domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic
connubiality.

Prove that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth.

To master Percy Apjohn at High School in 1880 he had divulged
his disbelief in the tenets of the Irish (protestant) church (to which his
father Rudolf Virag, later Rudolph Bloom, had been converted from
the Israelitic faith and communion in 1865 by the Society for promot-
ing Christianity among the jews) subsequently abjured by him in
favour of Roman Catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to his
matrimony in 1888. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade in 1882
during a juvenile friendship (terminated by the premature emigration
of the former) he had advocated during nocturnal perambulations the
political theory of colonial (c. g. Canadian) expansion and the evolu-
tionary theories of Charles Darwin, expounded in The Descent oj Man
and The Origin oj Species, In 1885 he had publicly expressed his
adherence to the collective and national economic programme
advocated by James Fintan Lalor, John Fisher Murray, John Milchel,
J. F. X. O’Brien and others, the agrarian policy of Michael Davitt, the
constitutional agitation of Charles Stewart Parnell (M. P. for Cork
City), the programme of peace, retrenchment and reform of William
Ewart Gladstone (M. P. for Midlothian, N. B.) and, in support of his
political convictions, had climbed up into a secure position amid the
ramifications of a tree on Northumberland road to sec the entrance
(2 February 1888) into the capital of a demonstrative torchlight
procession of 20,000, divided into 1 20 trade corporations, bearing
2,000 torches in escort of the marquess of Ripon and John Morley.

677

How much and how did he propose to pay for this country residence?

As per prospectus of the Industrious Foreign Acclimatised National-
ised Friendly Stateaided Building Society (incorporated 1874), a
maximum of £60 per annum, being i/6th of an assured income,
derived from giltcdged securities, representing at 5% simple interest
on capital of ^1,200 (estimate of price at 20 years purchase) of
which i/3rd to be paid on acquisition and the balance in the form
of annual rent, viz. ^800 plus 2^% interest on the same, repayable
quarterly in equal annual instalments until extinction by amortisation
of loan advanced for purchase within a period of 20 years, amounting
to an annual rental of £64, hcadrent included, the titledeeds to remain
in possession of the lender or lenders with a saving clause envisaging
forced sale, foreclosure and mutual compensation in the event of
protracted failure to pay the terms assigned, otherwise the messuage to
become the absolute property of the tenant occupier upon expiry of
the period of years stipulated.

What rapid but insecure means to opulence might facilitate immedi-
ate purchase?

A private wireless telegraph which w-ould transmit by dot and dash
system the result of a national equine handicap (flat or steeplechase) of
I or more miles and furlongs won by an outsider at odds of 50 to 1 at
3 hr. 8 m. p.m. at Ascot (Greenwich time) the message being received
and available for betting purposes in Dublin at 2.59 p. m. (Dunsink
time). The unexpected discovery of an object of great monetary value:
precious stone, valuable adhesive or impressed postage stamps (7-shill-
ing, mauve, imperforate, Hamburg, 1866: 4 pence, rose, blue, paper
perforate, Great Britain, 1855: i franc, stone, official, roulettcd,
diagonal surcharge, Luxembourg, 1878): antique dynastical ring,
unique relic in unusual repositories or by unusual means: from the air
(dropped by an eagle in flight), by fire (amid the carbonised remains of
an incendiated edifice), in the sea (amid flotsam, jetsam, lagan and
derelict), on earth (in the gizzard of a comestible fowl). A Spanish
prisoner’s donation of a distant treasure of valuables or specie or bullion
lodged with a solvent banking corporation too years previously at
5% compound interest of the collective worth of ^^5, 000,000 stg (five
million pounds sterling). A contract with an inconsiderate contractee
for the delivery of 32 consignments of some given commodity in
consideration of cash payment on delivery at the initial rate of i/4d.

678 .

to be increased constantly in the geometrical progression of 2 (i/4d.,
i/2d., id., 2d., 4d., 8d., is. 4d., 2s. 8d. to 32 terms). A prepared
scheme based on a study of the laws of probability to break the bank
at Monte Carlo. A solution of the secular problem of the quadrature
of the circle, government premium ,^1,000,000 sterling.

Was vast wealth acquirable through industrial channels?

The reclamation of dunams of waste arenary soil, proposed in the
prospectus of Agcndath Netaim, Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, \V.15, by
the cultivation of orange plantations and melonficlds and reafforesta-
tion. The utilisation of waste paper, fells of sewer rodents, human
excrement possessing chemical properties, in view of the vast produc-
tion of the first, vast number of the second and immense quantity of
the third, every normal human being of average vitality and appetite
producing annually, cancelling byproducts of water, a sum total of
80 lbs. (mixed animal and vegetable diet), to be multiplied by
4,386,035 the total population of Ireland according to the census
returns of 1901.

Were there schemes of w'ider scope?

A scheme to be formulated and submitted for approval to the
harbour commissioners for the exploitation of white coal (hydraulic
power), obtained by hydroelectric plant at peak of tide at Dublin bar
or at head of water at Poulaphouca or Powcrscourt or catchment basins
of main streams for the economic production of 500,000 W. H. P. of
electricity. A scheme to enclose the peninsular delta of the North Bull
at Dollymount and erect on the space of the foreland, used for golf
links and rifle ranges, an asphalted esplanade with casinos, booths,
shooting galleries, hotels, boardinghouses, readingrooms, establish-
ments for mixed bathing. A scheme for the use of dogvans and goat-
vans for the delivery of early morning milk. A scheme for the
development of Irish tourist traffic in and around Dublin by means of
pctrolpropclled riverboats, plying in the fluvial fairway between Island
bridge and Ringsend, charabancs, narrow gauge local railways, and
pleasure steamers for coastwise navigation [10/- per person per day,
guide (trilingual) included]. A scheme for the repristination of
passenger and goods traffics over Irish waterways, when freed from
weedbeds. A scheme to connect by tramline the Cattle Market (North
Circular road and Prussia street) with the quays (Sheriff street, lower,

679

and East Wall), parallel with the Link line railway laid (in conjunction
with the Great Southern and Western railway line) between the cattle
park, LifFey junction, and terminus of Midland Great Western railway
43 to 45 North Wall, in proximity to the terminal stations or Dublin
branches of Great Central Railway, Midland Railway of England,
City of Dublin Steam Packet Company, Lancashire Yorkshire Railway
Company, Dublin and Glasgow Steam Packet Company, Glasgow
Dublin and Londonderry Steam Packet Company (Laird line),
British and Irish Steam Packet Company, Dublin and Morecambe
Steamers, London and North Western Railway Company, Dublin
Port and Docks Board Landing Sheds and transit sheds of Palgrave,
Murphy and Company, steamship owners, agents for steamers from
Mediterranean, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Holland and for
animal transport and of additional mileage operated by the Dublin
United Tramways Company, limited, to be covered by graziers’ fees.

Positing what protasis would the contraction for such several
schemes become a natural and necessary apodosisP

Given a guarantee equal to the sum sought, the support, by deed
of gift and transfer vouchers during donor’s lifetime or by bequest
after donor’s painless extinction, of eminent financiers (Blum Pasha,
Rothschild, Guggenheim, Hirsch, Montcfiorc, Morgan, Rockefeller)
possessing fortunes in 6 figures, amassed during a successful life, and
ioining capital with opportunity the thing required was done.

What eventually would render him independent of such wealth?

The independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible ore.

For what reason did he meditate on schemes so difficult of realisation?

It was one of his axioms that similar meditations or the automatic
relation to himself of a narrative concerning himself or tranquil
recollection of the past when practised habitually before retiring for the
night alleviated fatigue and produced as a result sound repose and
renovated vitality.

His justifications?

As a physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete human
life at least a/yths, viz., 20 years passed in sleep. As a philosopher he
knew that at the termination of any allotted life only an infinitesimal

680

part of any person’s desires has been realised. As a physiologist he
believed in the artificial placation of malignant agencies chiefly
operative during somnolence.

What did he fear?

The committal of homicide or suicide during sleep by an aberration
of the light of reason, the incommensurable categorical intelligence
situated in the cerebral convolutions.

What were habitually his final meditations?

Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in
wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded,
reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span
of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life.

What did the first drawer unlocked contain?

A Vere Foster’s handwriting copybook, property of Milly (Milli-
cent) Bloom, certain pages of which bore diagram drawings marked
Papliy which showed a large globular head with 5 hairs erect, 2 eyes
in profile, the trunk full front with 3 large buttons, t triangular foot:
2 fading photographs of queen Alexandra of England and of .Maud
Branscombe, actress and professional beauty: a Yulctidc card, bearing
on it a pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend Mizpah^
the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders, from Mr and .Mrs M.
Comerford, the versicic: May this 1 uletide bring to thcfy "Joy and peace
and welcome glee: a butt of red partly liquefied sealing wax, obtained
from the stores departn^ent of Messrs Hely’s, Ltd., 89, 90 and 91^
Dame street: a box containing the remainder of a gross of gilt ‘J’
pennibs, obtained from same department of same firm: an old sand-
glass w’hich rolled containing sand which rolled: a scaled prophecy
(never unsealed) written by Leopold Bloom in 1886 concerning the
consequences of the passing into law of William Ewart Gladstone s
Home Rule bill of 1886 (never passed into law): a bazaar ticket
N“ 2004, of S. Kevin’s Charity Fair, price 6d. too prizes: an infantile
epistle, dated, small cm monday, reading: capital pee Papli comma
capital aitch How are you note of interrogation capital eye 1 am vcij
well full stop new paragraph signature with flourishes capital cm Milly
no stop: a cameo brooch, property of Ellen Bloom (born Higgins),
deceased: 3 typewritten letters, addressee, Henry Flower, c/o P.O.

68 1

Westland Row, addresser, Martha Clifford, c/o P.O. Dolphin’s Barn:
the transliterated name and address of the addresser of the 3 letters
in reserved alphabetic boustrophedontic punctated quadrilinear crypto-
gram (vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI.UU. OX/VV. OKS. MH/Y.
IM: a press cutting from an English weekly periodical Modern Society,
subject corporal chastisement in girls’ schools: a pink ribbon which had
festooned an Easter egg in the year 1899: two partly uncoiled rubber
preservatives with reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box 32,
P. O., Charing Cross, London, VV. C.: i pack of i dozen creamlaid
envelopes and faintruled notepaper, watermarked, now reduced by 3:
some assorted Austrian-Hungarian coins: 2 coupons of the Royal and
Privileged Hungarian Lottery: a lowpower magnifying glass: 2 erotic
photocards showing: a) buccal coition between nude senorita (rcrc
presentation, superior position) and nude torero (fore presentation,
inferior position): b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed,
eyes abject) of female religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), purchased
by post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, W. C.,: a press
cutting of recipe for renovation of old tan boots: a id. adhesive stamp,
lavender, of the reign of Queen Victoria: a chart of measurements of
Leopold Bloom compiled before, during and after 2 months of
consecutive use of Sandow-Whitcley’s pulley exerciser (men’s 1 5/-,
athlete’s 20/-) viz., chest 28 in. and 29 1/2 in., biceps 9 in., and
10 in., forearm 8 1/2 and 9 in., thigh 10 in. and 12 in., calf ii in.
and 12 in.: i prospectus of the Wonderworker, the world’s greatest
remedy for rectal complaints direct from Wonderworker, Coventry
House, South Place, London E. C., addressed to Mrs. L. Bloom with
brief accompanying note commencing : Dear Madam.

Quote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed advantages
for this thaumaturgic remedy.

It heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in break-
ing wind, assists nature in the most formidable way, insuring instant
relief in discharge of gases, keeping parts clean and free natural
action, an initial outlay of 7/6 making a new man of you and
life worth living. Ladies find Wonderworker especially useful, a
pleasant surprise when they note delightful result like a cool drink
of fresh spring water on a sultry summer’s day. Recommend it to
your lady and gentlemen friends, lasts a lifetime. Insert long round
end. Wonderworker.

682

Were there testimonials?

Numerous. From clergyman, British na\al officer, well-known
author, city man, hospital nurse, lady, mother ot five, absentminded
beggar.

How did absentminded beggar’s concluding testimonial conclude?

What a pity the government did not supply our men with wonder-
workers during the South .\frican campaign! \\ hat a rcliet it would
have been!

What object did Bloom add to this collection of objects?

A 4th typewritten letter received by Henry Flower (let H. F. be
L. B.) from \Iartha Clifford (find .M. C.).

What pleasant reflection accompanied this action?

The reflection that, apart from the letter in question, his magnetic
face, form and address had been favourably received during the course
of the preceding day bv a wife (Mrs Josephine Breen, born Josie
Powell); a nurse. Miss Callan (Christian name unknown), a maid,
Gertrude (Gcrty, family name unknown).

What possibility suggested itself?

The possibility' of exercising virile power of fascination in the most
immediate future after an expensive repast in a private apartment in
the company of an elegant courtesan, of corporal beauty, moderately
mercenary, variously instructed, a lady by origin.

What did the 2n<i drawer contain?

Documents: the birth certificate of Leopold Paula Bloom: an endow-
ment assurance policy of £$<=>0 the Scottish Widows’ Assurance
Society intestated Milliccnt (Milly) Bloom, coming into force at 25
years as with profit policy of £^^0, £^62-10^0 and £$00 at 60 years
or death, 6c years or death and death, respectively, or with profit
policy (paidup) of ^299-10-0 together with cash payment of
/i -11-10-0, at option: a bank passbook issued by the Ulster Bank,
College Green branch showing statement of a/c for half year ending
1 1 December 1903, balance in depositor’s favour: ^18-14-6 (eighteen
pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence, sterling), net personalty,
certificate of possession of £>)oo Canadian 4% (inscribe ) governme

683

stock (free of stamp duty): dockets of the Catholic Cemeteries’
(Glasnevin) Committee, relative to a graveplot purchased: a local press
cutting concerning change of name by deedpoll.

Ouotc the textual terms ot this notice.

I, Rudolph Virag, now resident at n^ 52 Clanbrassil street, Dublin,
formerly of Szombathely in the kingdom of Hungary, hereby give
notice that I have assumed and intend henceforth upon all occasions
and at all times to be known by the name of Rudolph Bloom.

W'liat other objects relative to Rudolph Bloom (born Virag) were
in tlie 2nd drawer?

An indistinct daguerreotype of Rudolph Virag and his father
Leopold ^'^irag executed in the year 1 852 in the portrait atelier of their
(respectively) ist and 2nd cousin, Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar,
Hungary. An ancient hagadah book in which a pair of hornrimmed
convex spectacles inserted marked the passage of thanksgiving in the
ritual prayers for Pessach (Passover): a photocard of the Queen’s
Hotel, Ennis, proprietor, Rudolph Bloom: an envelope addressed
To my Dear Son Leopold.

What fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five whole words
evoke?

Tomorrow will be a week that I received . , . it is no use Leopold
to be . . . with your dear mother . . . that is not more to stand
. . . to her ... all for me is out ... be kind to Athos, Leopold
. . . my dear son . . . always . . . of me . . . das Herz . . .
Gott . . . dein . . .

What reminiscences of a human subject suffering from progressive
melancholia did these objects evoke in Bloom?

An old man widow-er, unkempt hair, in bed, with head covered,
sighing: an infirm dog, Athos: aconite, resorted to by increasing doses
of grains and scruples as a palliative of recrudescent neuralgia: the face
in death of a septuagenarian suicide by poison.

Why did Bloom experience a sentiment of remorse?

Because in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect
certain beliefs and practices.

684

As?

The prohibition of the use of Heshmeat anjJ milk at one meal, the
hebdomadary symposium of incoordinate!)' abstract, pcrfervidly
concrete mercantile coexreligionist excompatriots: the circumcision of
male infants: the supernatural character of Judaic scripture: the ineff-
ability of the tetragrammaron: the sanctity of the sabbath.

How did these beliefs and practices now appear to him?

Not more rational than they had then appeared, not less rational
than other beliefs and practices now appeared.

What first reminiscence had he of Rudolph Bloom (deceased)?

Rudolph Bloom (deceased) narrated to his son Leopold Bloom
(aged 6) a retrospective arrangement of migrations and settlements in
and between Dublin, London, Florence, Milan, V'icnna, Budapest,
Szombalhely, with statements of satisfaction (his grandfather leaving
»ecn Maria Theresa, empress of Austria, queen of Hungary), with
commercial advice (having taken care of pence, the pounds having
taken care of themselves). Leopold Bloom (aged 6) had accompanied
these narrations by constant consultation of a geographical map of
Europe (political) and by suggestions lor the establishment of alhliated
business premises in the various centres mentioned.

Had time equally but differently obliterated the memory of these

migrations in narrator and listener?

In narrator by the access of years and in consequence of the use of
narcotic toxin: in listener by the access of years and in consequence of
the action of distraction upon vicarious experiences.

What idiosyncrasies of the narrator were concomitant products of
amnesia?

Occasionally he ate without having previously removed his hat.
Occasionally he drank voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool froni
an inclined plate. Occasionally he removed from his lips the traces of
food by means of a lacerated envelope or other accessible fragment o

paper.

What two phenomena of senescence were more frequent?

The myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent upon

repletion.

^ 685

\\'hat object offered partial consolation for these reminiscences?

The endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate of the
possession of scrip.

Reduce Bloom by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune, from
which these supports protected him, and by elimination of all positive
values to a negligible negative irrational unreal quantity.

Successively, in descending helotic order; Poverty: that of the out-
door hawker of imitation jewellery, the dun for the recovery of bad and
doubtful debts, the poor rate and deputy cess collector. Mendicancy:
that of the fraudulent bankrupt with negligible assets paying is. 4d.
in the sandwichman, distributor of throwaways, nocturnal vagrant,
insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind stripling, superannuated
bailiff’s man, marfeasl, lickplate, spoilsport, pickthank, eccentric
public laughingstock seated on bench of public park under discarded
perforated umbrella. Destitution: the inmate of Old Man’s House
(Royal Hospital), Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson’s Hospital for
reduced but respectable men permanently disabled by gout or want of
sigh^ Nadir of misery: the aged impotent disfranchised ratesupporicd
moribund lunatic pauper.

With which attendant indignities?

The unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females, the
contempt of muscular males, the acceptance of fragments of bread,
the simulated ignorance of casual acquaintances, the latration of
illegitimate unlicensed vagabond dogs, the infantile discharge of

decomposed vegetable missiles, worth little or nothing or less than
nothing.

By what could such a situation be precluded?

By decease (change of state), by departure (change of place).

Which preferably?

The latter, by the line of least resistance.

What considerations rendered it not entirely undesirable?

Constant cohabitation impeding mutual toleration of personal
defects. The habit of independent purchase increasingly cultivated.
The necessity to counteract by impermanent sojourn the permanence
of arrest.

686

What considerations rendered it not irrational?

The parties concerned, uniting, had increased and multiplied, which
being done, offspring produced and educed to maturity, the parties,
if now disunited were obliged to reunite for increase and multiplica-
tion, which was absurd, to form by reunion the original couple of
uniting parties, which was impossible.

What considerations rendered it desirable?

The attractive character ot certain localities in Ireland and abroad,
as represented in general geographical maps of polychrome design or
in special ordnance survey charts by employment of scale numerals
and hachures.

In Ireland?

The cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough Neagh
with submerged petrified city, the Giant s Causeway, Fort Camden
and Fort Carlisle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary, the islands of Aran,
the pastures of royal Meath, Brigid’s elm in Kildare, the Queen s
Island shipyard in Belfast, the Salmon Leap, the lakes of Killarncy.

Abroad?

Ceylon (with spicegardens supplying tea to Thomas Kcrnan, agent
for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 2 Mincing lane, London, E. C.,
5 Dame street, Dublin), Jerusalem, the holy city (with mosque of
Omar and gate of Damascus, goal of aspiration), the straits of Gibraltar
(the unique birthplace of Marion Tweedy), the Parthenon (containing
statues, nude Grecian divinities), the Wall street money market (which
controlled international finance), the Plaza de Toros at La Linea,
Spain (where O’Hara of the Camerons had slain the bull), Niagara
(over which no human being had passed with impunity), the land of
the Eskimos (caters of soap), the forbidden country of Thibet (from
which no traveller returns), the bay of Naples (to sec which was to
die), the Dead Sea.

Under what guidance, following what signs? ■ u • r

At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point ot
intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Major produced
and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse ot the rightangled
triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the line

687

alpha delta of Ursa Major. On land, meridional, a bisphcrical moon,
revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the posterior
interstice of the imperfectly occluded sldrt of a carnose negligent
perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day.

What public advertisement would divulge the occultation of the
departed?

^5 reward lost, stolen or strayed from his residence 7 Eccles street,
missing gent about 40, answering to the name of Bloom, Leopold
(Poldy), height 5 ft 9 1/2 inches, full build, olive complexion, may
have since grown a beard, when last seen was wearing a black suit.
Above sum will be paid for information leading to his discovery.

What universal binomial denominations would be his as entity and
nonentity?

Assumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman.

What tributes his?

Honour and gifts of strangers, the friends of Everyman. A nymph
immortal, beauty, the bride of Noman.

Would the departed never nowhere nohow reappear?

Ever he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his
cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic
planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of
space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events. Some-
where imperceptibly he would hear and somehow reluctantly, sun-
compelled, obey the summons of recall. Whence, disappearing from
the constellation of the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear
reborn above delta in the constellation of Cassiopeia and after incal-
culable cons of peregrination return an estranged avenger, a wreaker of
justice on malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with
financial resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or
of the silver king.

What would render such return irrational?

An unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time
through reversible space and an exodus and return in space through
irreversible time.

688

What play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure un-
desirable?

The lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory: the obscurity
of the night, rendering invisible: the uncertainty of thoroughtares,
rendering perilous: the necessity for repose, obviating movement: the
proximity of an occupied bed, obviating research: the anticipation of
warmth (human) tempered w ith coolness (linen), ob\ iating desire and
rendering desirable: the statue of rvarcissus, sound without echo,
desired desire.

What advantages were possessed by an occupied, as distinct from an
unoccupied bed?

The removal of nocturnal solitude, the superior quality of human
(mature female) to inhuman (hotwaterjar) calctaction, the stimulation
of matutinal contact, the economy of mangling done on the premises
in the case of trousers accurately folded and placed lengthwise
between the spring mattress (striped) and the woollen mattress (biscuit

section).

What past consecutive causes, before rising preapprehended, of
accumulated fatigue did Bloom, before rising, silently recapitulate?

The preparation of breakfast (burnt offering): intestinal congestion
and premeditative defecation (holy of holies): the bath (rite of John),
the funeral (rite of Samuel): the advertisement of Alexander Keyes
(Urim and Thummin): the unsubstantial lunch (rite of .Mclchizedek):
the visit to museum and national library (holy place): the bookhunt
along Bedford row. Merchants' Arch, Wellington Quay (Simchath
Torah): the music in the Ormond Hotel (Shira Shirim): the alterca-
tion w'ith a truculent troglodyte in Bernard Kiernan's premises
(holocaust): a blank period of time including a cardnve, a visit to a
house of mourning, a leavetaking (wilderness): the eroticisnt produced
by feminine exhibitionism (rite of Onan): the prolonged delivery of
Mrs Mina Purefoy (heave offering): the visit to the disorderly house
of Mrs Bella Cohen, 82 Tyrone street, lower, and subsequent brawl
and chance medley in Beaver street (Armageddon): nocturnal per-
ambulation to and from the cabman's shelter, Butt Bridge (atonement).

What self imposed enigma did Bloom about to rise in order to go so
as to conclude lest he should not conclude involuntarily apprehend.

689

The cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack emitted
by the insentient material of a strainveined timber table.

What selfinvolvcd enigma did Bloom risen, going, gathering multi-
coloured multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily apprehend-
ing, not comprehend?

Who was JVlTntosh?

\^'hat selfevidcnt enigma pondered with desultory constancy during
30 years did Bloom now, having effected natural obscurity by the
extinction of artificial light, silently suddenly comprehend?

Where was Moses when the candle went out?

What imperfections in a perfect day did Bloom, walking, silently,
successively, enumerate?

A provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement, to obtain
a certain quantity of tea from Thomas Kcrnan (agent for Pulbrook,
Robertson and C®, 5 Dame street, Dublin, and 2 Mincing lane,
London, E.C.), to certify the presence or absence of posterior rectal
orifice in the case of Hellenic female divinities, to obtain admission
(gratuitous or paid) to the performance of Leah by Mrs Bandman
Palmer at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49, South King street.

What impression of an absent face did Bloom, arrested, silently
recall?

The face of her father, the late Major Brian Cooper Tw'cedy, Royal
Dublin Fusiliers, of Gibraltar and Rchoboth, Dolphin’s Barn.

What recurrent impressions of the same were possible by the
liypolhesis?

Retreating, at the ternfinus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens
street, with constant uniform acceleration, along parallel lines meeting
at infinity, if produced: along parallel lines, reproduced from infinity,
\\ith constant uniform retardation, at the terminus of the Great
Northern Railway, Amiens street, returning.

What miscellaneous effects of female personal wearing apparel were
perceived by him?

A pair of new inodorous halfsilk black ladies* hose, a pair of new

690

violet garters, a pair of outsize ladies’ drawers of India mull, cut on
generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti’s Turkish
cigarettes and containing a long bright steel safety pin, folded curs'i-
lincar, a camisole of batiste with thin lace border, an accordion under-
skirt of blue silk moirettc, all these objects being disposed irregularly
on the lop of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened, having capped
corners, with multicoloured labels, initialled on its fore side in white
lettering B. C. T. (Brian Cooper Tweedy).

What impersonal objects were perceived?

A commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square cretonne
cutting, apple design, on which rested a lady’s black straw hat.
Orangekeyed ware, bought of Henry Price, basket, fancy goods,
chinaware and ironmongery manufacturer, 21, 22, 23 Moore street,
disposed irregularly on the washstand and floor, and consisting of
basin, soapdish and brushtray (on the washstand, together), pitcher
and night article (on the floor, separate).

Bloom’s acts?

He deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed his
remaining articles of clothing, took from beneath the bolster at the
head of the bed a folded long white nightshirt, inserted his head and
arms into the proper apertures of the nightshirt, removed a pillow
from the head to the foot of the bed, prepared the bedlincn accordingly
and entered the bed.

How?

With circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode (his
own or not his own): with solicitude, the snakespiral springs of the
mattress being old, the brass quoits and pendent viper radii loose and
tremulous under stress and strain: prudently, as entering a lair or
ambush of lust or adder: lightly, the less to disturb: reverently, the
bed of conception and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of
breach of marriage, of sleep and of death.

What did his limbs, when gradually extended, encounter?

New clean bedlincn, additional odours, the presence of a human
form, female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some
crumbs, some flakes of potted meat, rccookcd, which he removed.

691

If he had smiled why would he have smiled?

To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first
to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even
if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first,
last, only and alone, whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor
alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.

What preceding scries?

Assuming Mulvey to be the first term of his scries, Penrose, Bartell
d’Arcy, professor Goodw'in, Julius Mastiansky, John Henry Menton,
Father Bernard Corrigan, a farmer at the Royal Dublin Society’s
Horse Show, Maggot O'Reilly, Matthew Dillon, Valentine BlaJte
Dillon (Lord Mayor of Dublin), Christopher Callinan, Lenehan, an
Italian organgrinder, an unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre,
Benjamin Dollard, Simon Dedalus, Andrew (Pisscr) Burke, Joseph
Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman John Hooper, Dr Francis Brady,
Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a bootblack at the General Post
Office, Hugh E. (Blazes) Boylan and so each and so on to no last term.

What were his reflections concerning the last member of this scries
and late occupant of the bed?

Reflections on his vigour (a bounder), corporal proportion (a
billstickcr), commercial ability (a bester), impressionability (a
boaster).

Why for the observer impressionability in addition to vigour,
corporal proportion and commercial ability?

Because he had observed with augmenting frequency in the preced-
ing members of the same scries the same concupiscence, inflammably
transmitted first with alarm, then with understanding, then with desire,
finally with fatigue, with alternating symptoms of epicene comprehen-
sion and apprehension.

With what antagonistic sentiments were his subsequent reflections
affected?

Envy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity.

Envy?

Of a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted for the

692

superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic
piston and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction
of a constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and
mental female organism, passive but not obtuse.

Jealousy?

Because a nature full and volatile in its free state, was alternately
the agent and reagent of attraction. Because action between agents
and reagents at all instants varied, with inverse proportion of increase
and decrease, with incessant circular extension and radial reentrance.
Because the controlled contemplation of the fluctuation of attraction
produced, if desired, a fluctuation of pleasure.

Abnegation?

In virtue of a) acquaintance initiated in September 1903
establishment of George Mesias, merchant tailor and outfitter, 5 Eden
Quay, b) hospitality extended and received in kind, reciprocated and
reappropriated in person, c) comparative youth subject to impulses of
ambition and magnanimity, collcagual altruism and amorous egoism,
d) cxtraracial attraction, intraracial inhibition, supraracial prerogative,
c) an imminent provincial musical tour, common current expenses, net

proceeds divided.

Equanimity?

As natural as any and every natural .act of a nature expressed or
understood executed in natured nature by natural creatures in accor -
ance with his, her and their natured natures, of dissimilar similarity. As
not- as calamitous as a cataclysmic annihilation of the planet in cojise-
qucncc of collision with a dark sun. As less reprehensible than thett,
highway robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money
under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation ot
public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corrup-
tion of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt ot court, arson,
treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary. jaUbreaK-
ing, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the held,
perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the kings
personation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful an preme 1 .
murder. As not more abnormal than all other altered ^ .

adaptation to altered conditions of existence, resulting in a reciprocal

693

equilibrium between the bodily organism and its attendant circum-
stances, foods, beverages, acquired habits, indulged inclinations,
significant disease. As more than inevitable, irreparable.

Why more abnegation than jealousy, less envy than equanimity?

From outrage (matrimony) to outrage (adultery) there arose nought
but outrage (copulation) yet the matrimonial violator of the matri-
monially violated had not been outraged by the adulterous violator
of the adulterously violated.

What retribution, if any?

Assassination, never, as two wrongs did not make one right. Duel
by combat, no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical artifice
(automatic bed) or individual testimony (concealed ocular witness),
not yet. Suit for damages by legal influence or simulation of assault
with evidence of injuries sustained (sclfinflicted), not impossibly. If
any, positively, connivance, introduction of emulation (material, a
prosperous rival agency of publicity: moral, a successful rival agent of
intimacy), depreciation, alienation, humiliation, separation protecting
the one separated from the other, protecting separator from both.

By what reflections did he, a conscious reactor against the void
incertitude, justify to himself his sentiments?

The preordained frangibility of the hymen, the presupposed in-
tangibility of the thing in itself; the incongruity and disproportion
between the selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done
and the selfabbreviating relaxation of the thing done: the fallaciously
inferred debility of the female, the muscularity of the male: the
variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by
inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposi-
tion (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopceic transitive
verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its
correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject,
auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopojic past participle
with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice: the con-
tinued product of seminators by generation: the continual production
of semen by distillation; the futility of triumph or protest or vindica-
tion: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of nescient matter: the
apathy of the stars.

In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and
reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?

Satisfaction at the ubiquity in eastern and western terrestrial hemi-
spheres, in all habitable lands and islands explored or unexplored (the
land of the midnight sun, the islands of the blessed, the isles of Greece,
the land of promise) of adipose posterior female hemispheres, redolent
of milk and honey and of excretory sanguine and seminal warmth,
reminiscent of secular families of curves of amplitude, insusceptible of
moods of impression or of contrarieties of expression, expressive of
mute immutable mature animality.

The visible signs of antesatisfaction?

An approximate erection: a solicitous adversion: a gradual elevation:
a tentative revelation; a silent contemplation.

Then?

He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow' melons of her rump,
on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow,
with obscure prolonged provocative mclonsmellonous osculation.

The visible signs of postsaiisfaction?

A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement, a
solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.

What followed this silent action?

Somnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excita-
tion, catechetical interrogation.

With W'hat modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation?

Negative: he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence
between Martha Clifford and Henry Flower, the public altercation at,
in and in the vicinity of the licensed premises of Bernard Kiernan and
Co, Limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, the erotic provocation
and response thereto caused by the exhibitionism of Gertrude (Gerty),
surname unknown. Positive: he included mention of a performance by
Mrs Bandman Palmer of Leah at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47 > 4 ^* 49
South King street, an invitation to supper at Wynn’s (Murphy s)
Hotel 35, 36, and 37 Lower Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous
pornographical tendency entitled Sweets oj Sirtf anonymous, author a

gentleman of fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely
calculated movement in the course of a postcenal gymnastic display,
the victim (since completely recovered) being Stephen Dedalus,
professor and author, eldest surviving son of Simon Dedalus, of no
fixed occupation, an aeronautical feat executed by him (narrator) in
the presence of a witness, the professor and author aforesaid, w’ith
promptitude of decision and gymnastic flexibility.

Was the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications?

Absolutely.

W'hich event or person emerged as the salient point of his narration?

Stephen Dedalus, professor and author.

What limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal rights were
perceived by listener and narrator concerning themselves during the
course of this intermittent and increasingly more laconic narration?

By the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage had
been celebrated i calendar month after the i8th anniversary of her
birth (8 September 1870), viz. 8 October, and consummated on the
same date with female issue born 15 June 1889, having been antici-
patorily consummated on the 10 September of the same year and
complete carnal intercourse, w’ith ejaculation of semen within the
natural female organ, having last taken place 5 w'ceks previous, viz.
27 November 1893, to the birth on 29 December 1893 of second
(and only male) issue, deceased 9 January 1894, aged ii days, there
remained a period of 10 years, 5 months and 18 days during which
carnal intercourse had been incomplete, without ejaculation of semen
within the natural female organ. By the narrator a limitation of
activity, mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete mental inter-
course between himself and the listener had not taken place since the
consummation of puberty, indicated by catamcnic hemorrhage, of the
female issue of narrator and listener, 15 September 1903, there
remained a period of 9 months and i day during which in consequence
of a preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension between
the consummated females (listener and issue), complete corporal
liberty of action had been circumscribed.

How?

696

By various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the mascu-
line destination whither, the place wnere, the time at which, the dura-
tion for which, the object with which in the case of teniporary ab^cnces,
projected or effected.

What moved visibly above the listener^ and the narrator’s invisible
thoughts?

The upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series of
concentric circles of varying gradations of light and shadow .

In what directions did listener and narrator lie?

Listener, S. E. by E.: Narrator, N. W. by W.; on the 53rd parallel of
latitude, N. and 6th nveridian of longitude, W.: at an angle ot 45 to
the terrestrial equator.

In what state of rest or motion?

At rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being
each and both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively,
by the proper perpetual motion of the earth through cverchanging
tracks of ncverchanging space.

In what posture?

Listener; reclined semilatcrally, left, left liand under head, right leg
extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the attitude
of Gea-Tcllus, fulfilled, recumbent, big w'ith seed. Narrator; reclined
laterally, left, with right and left legs flexed, the indexfinger and
thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge of the nose, in the
attitude depicted on a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn,
the childman weary, the manchild in the womb.

Womb? Weary?

He rests. He has travelled.

With? .

Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and
Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failcr and
Binbad the Bailer arid Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer an
Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Pinbad the Kailcr and
Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailcr and Xinbad the Phthailer.

697

W hen:

(il'ing ti) a dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor
r<K v auk's (.-gg in the night ot the bed of all the auks of tlie rocs of
IXirkinh.id the Hriglitdavler.

Where?

★ KECAt SF. HE NEVER DID A THING LIKE THAT BEFORE AS ASK TO

get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel
when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing
tii-' litghncss to make himself interesting to that old faggot Mrs Riordan
th.it he thought he had a great leg of and slie never left us a farthing all
tor masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually
afraid to lay out 4.6 for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments
'lie had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and
the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world
it all the women were her sort down on bathingsuits and lownecks of
course nobody wanted her to wear I suppose she was pious because no
man would look at her twice I hope I’ll never be like her a wonder
she didn’t want us to cover our faces but she w'as a wclleducated woman
certainly and l^er gabby talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan
there I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling
my fur and alw'ays edging to get up under my petticoats especially
then still I like that in him polite to old women like that and waiters
and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing but not 'always if ever he
got anything really serious the matter with him its much better for
them go into a hospital where everything is clean but I suppose Id have
to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a hospital
nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till they throw
him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as much a
nun as Im not yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick
they want a woman to get w'ell if his nose bleeds youd think it was O
tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he
sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day
I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones
she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a

698

niaiii. bedroom with Ikt old m.lid^ voice trying to imagitK i
dying on account of her to nc\cr >cc tlty taco again though he !-■
more like a man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father w.i' li.-
same besides ! hate bandaging and dosing when he ciit his toe witli rh.
ra2or paring )iis corns atraid bed get blood poisoning but it it was a
thing I was sick then wed see what attention only ot course the woman
hides it not to give all the trouble they do yes he came somev.bcre Iin
sure bv bis appetite anvwav love its not or bed be otf his feed thinking
of her so cither it was one of those night women if it was down there
he was really and the hotel story he made up a pack of lies to hide it
planning it Hynes kept me who did I meet ah yes I met do you
remember Menton and who else who let me see that big babbytacc 1
saw' him and he not long married dirting with a young girl at Pooles
Nlyriorama and turned mv back on him when he slinked out looking
quite conscious what harm but he had the impudence to make up to
me one time w'cll done to him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes ot
all the big stupocs I ever met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate
having a long wrangle in bed or else if its not that its some little bitch
or other he got in w'ith somewhere or picked up on the sly it they only
knew him as well as I do ves because the day before yesterday he was
scribbling something a letter when 1 came into the front room
for the matches to show him Dignams death in the paper as if some-
thing told me and he covered it up with the blottingpapcr pretending
to be tliinking about business so very probably that was it to somebody
who thinks she has a softy in him because all men get a bit like that at
his age especially getting on to forty he is now' so as to wheedle any
money she can out of him no fool like an old fool and then the usual
kissing my bottom was to hide it not that I care two straws who he
docs it with or knew before that way though Id like to find out so long
as I donl have the two of them under my nose all the time like that slut
that Mary we had in Ontario terrace padding out her false bottom to
excite him bad enough to get the smell of those painted women oft
him once or twice I had a suspicion by getting him to conic near me
when I found the long hair on his coat without that one w-hen 1 went
into the kitchen pretending he was drinking water i w-oman is not
enough for them it w'as all his fault of course ruining servants then pro-
posing that she could cat at our table on Christmas if you please O no
thank you not in my house stealing my potatoes and the oysters 2/
per doz going out to see her aunt if you please common robbery so it

699

was but I was sure he had something on with that one it takes me to
find out a thing like that he said you have no proof it was her proof O
yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told her what I thought of
licr suggesting me to go out to be alone with her I wouldnt lower
myself to spy on them the garters I found in her room the Friday she
was out that was enough for me a little bit too much I saw too that her
face swelled up on her with teenper when I gave her her weeks notice
better do without them altogether do out the rooms myself quicker
only for the damn cooking and throwing out the dirt I gave it to him
anyhow either she or me leaves the house I couldnt even touch him if
I thouglit he was with a dirty barefaced liar and sloven like that one
denying it up to my face and singing about the place in the W C too
because she knew she was too well off yes because he couldnt possibly
do without it that long so he must do it somewhere and the last time

# was it the night Boylan gave my hand a

great squec^jc going along by the Tolka in my hand there steals another
I just pressed the back of his like that with iih' thumb to squeeze back
singing the young May Moon shes beaming love because he has an
idea about him and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and
going to the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the satisfaction
in any case God knows hes change in a way not to be always and ever
wearing the same old hat unless I paid some nicclooking boy to do it
since I cant do it myself a young boy would like me Id confuse him a
little alone with him if we were Id let him sec my garters the new ones
and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I know what boys
teel with that down on their check doing that frigging drawing out the
thing by the hour question and answer would you do this that and the
other with the coalman yes with a bishop yes'l w'ould because I told
him about some Dean or* Bishop w'as sitting beside me in the jews
Temjdes gardens when I was knitting that woollen thing a stranger to
Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and he tired
me out with statues encouraging him making him worse than he is
who IS in your mind now tell me who arc you thinking of who is it
tell me his name who tell me w-ho the German Emperor is it yes
imagine Im him think of him can you feel him trying to make a whore
of me what he never will he ought to give it up now at this age of his
life simply ruination for any w'oman and no satisfaction in it pretending
to ikc It till he comes and then finish it off myself anyway and it
makes your Ups pale anyhow its done now once and for all with all the

700

talk of the world about it people make its only the first time after that
its just tlic ordinary do it and think no more about it \'hv cant you
kiss a man without going and marrying him first you sometimes love
to wildly when you feel that way so nice all o\'cr you you cant help
yourself I wish sonw man or other would take me sometime when he:>
there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot
down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that contession
when I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what
harm if he did where and 1 said on the canal bank like a fool hut
whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it
yes rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he
say bottom right out and have done with it what has that got to do
vs'ith it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father and I
always think of the real father what did he want to know for when I
already confessed it to God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist
always I wouldn’t mind feeling it neither would he Id say by the bull-
neck in his horsccollar I wonder did he know me in the box I could
see his face he couldn’t sec mine of course hed never turn or let on still
his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost for a woman of course
must be terrible w'hcn a man cries let alone them Id like to be embraced
by one in his vestments and the smell of incense off him like the pope
besides theres no danger with a priest if yourc married hes too careful
about himself then give something to H H the pope for a penance I
wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt like his slapping me
behind going away so familiarly in the hall though I laughed Im not
a horse or an ass am I I suppose he w'as thinking of his father I w'onder
is he awake thinking of me or dreaming am I in it who gave him that
flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of a drink not whisky
or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their bills up
with some liquor Id like to sip those richlooking green and yellow
expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera hats I
tasted one with my finger dipped out of that American that had the
squirrel talking stamps w’ith father he had all he could do to keep him-
self from falling asleep after the last time we took the port and potted
meat it had a fine sally taste yes because I felt lovely and tired myself
and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I popped straight into
bed till that thunder woke me up as if the world was coming to an end
God be merciful to us I thought the heavens were coming down about
us to punish when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those

701

a\v till ihundcrbolts in Gibraltar and they conic and tell you theres no
C.od what could you do if it was running and rushing about nothing
only make an act of contrition the candle I lit that evening in White-
triars street chapel for the month of May see it brought its luck though
lied scotl it he heard because he never goes to church mass or meeting
he says your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he
doesn’t know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp yes because
he must have come 3 or 4 tunes with that* tremendous big red brute
of a thing he has I thought the vein or whatever the dickens they call
It was going to burst though his nose is not so big after 1 took off all
my things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming
and combing it like iron or some kind of a thick crowbar standing all
the time he must have eaten oysters I think a few dozen he was in
great singing voice no I never in all mv life felt anyone had one the
size of that to make you feel full up he must have eaten a whole sheep
alter whats the idea making us like that with a big hole in the middle
ot us like a Stallion driving it up into you because thats all they want
out of you with that determined vicious look in his eye I had to half-
shut my eyes still he hasn’t such a tremendous amount of spunk in him
when I made him pull it out and do it on me considering how big it is
so much the beuer m case any of it wasnt washed out properly the last
time I let him finish it in me nice invention they made for w-omcn for
him to get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it
diemsclvcs iheyd know what I went through with Milly nobody would
believe cutting her teeth too and Mina Purefoys husband give us a
swing out of your whiskers filling her up with a child or twins once a
year as regular as the clock always with a smell of children off her the
one they called budgers or something like a nigger with a shock of hair
on It Jesusjack the child is a black the last time I was there a squad of
them falling over one another and bawling you couldnt hear your car
supposed to be hea thy not satisfied till they have us swollen out like
elephants or I dont know what supposing I risked having another not off
him though still if he was married Im sure hed have a fine strong child
but I dont know Poldy has more spunk in him yes thatd be a^ully

aboL n T «nd the funeral and thinking

V htm <,ff well he can think what he likes now

if thatll do him any good I know they were spooning a bit when I

came on the scene he w-as danang and sitting out with her the nigh't
of Georgina Simpsons housewarming and then he wanted to ram it

702

down my neck on account ot not liking to see lier a wallflower that was
whv we had the standup row o\’er politics he began it not me w hen he
said about Our Lord being a carpenter at last he made me cry ot course
a woman is so sensitive about every thing I was turning with myself
after for giving in only tor I knew he was gone on me and the first
socialist he said He was he annoyed me so much 1 couldnt put him
into a temper still he knows a lot of mixed up things especially about
the body and the insides I often wanted to study up that myself what
we have inside us in that tamily physician I could always hear his
voice talking when tlic room was crowded and watch him after that I
pretended I had on a coolness with her over him because he used to be
a bit on the jealous side whenever he asked who are you going to and
I said over to Flocy and he made me the present of lord Byrons poems
and the three pairs of gloves so that hnished that I could quite easily
get him to make it up any time I know how Id even supposing he got
in with her again and was going out to see her somewhere Id know if he
refused to cat the onions I know plenty of ways ask him to tuck down
the collar of mv blouse or touch him with my veil and gloves on going
out I kiss then' would send them all spinning however alright well see
then let him go to her she of course would only be too delighted to
pretend shes mad in love with him that I wouldni so much mind Id just
go to her and ask her do you love him and look her square in the eyes
she couldnt fool me but he might imagine he was and make a declara-
tion with his plabbcry kind of a manner to her like he did to nic though
I had the devils own job to get it out of him though I liked him tor
that it showed he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the asking he
was on the pop of asking me too the night in the kitchen I was rolling
the potato cake thcres something I want to say to you only for I put
him off letting on I was in a temper with my hands and arms full ot
pasty flour in any case I let out too much the night before t^ing of
dreams so I didnt want to let him know more than was good for him
she used to be alw-ays embracing me Josie whenever he was there
meaning him of course glauming me over and when I said I ^"^hed

up and down as far as possible asking me did '

women arc always egging on to that putting it on thick when hes there

they know by his sly eye blinking a bit puttmg on the indifferent
whin they come out with something the kind he is what h.m I

dont w'ondcr in the least because he was very handsome at that time
trying to look like lord Byron I said I liked though he was too beautiful

703

for a man and be was a little before we got engaged afterwards though
she didnt like it so much the day I was in fits of laughing with the
giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins falling one after another
\sith the mass of hair I had youre always in great humour she said yes
because it grigged her because she knew what it meant because I used
to tel! her a good bit of what went on between us not all but just
enough to make her mouth water but that w'asnt my fault she didnt
darken the door much after we were niarried I wonder what shes got
like now after living with that dotty husband of hers she had her face
beginning to look drawn and run down the last time I saw her she must
have been just after a row with him because I saw on the n^oment she
was edging to draw down a conversation about husbands and talk about
him to run him down what was it she told me O yes that sometimes he
used to go to bed with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him
just imagine liaving to get into bed with a thing like that that might
murder you any moment what a man well its not the one way everyone
goes mad Poldy anyway whatever he does always wipes his feet on the
mat when he comes in wet or shine and always blacks his own boots
too and he always takes off his hat when he comes up in the street
like that and now hes going about in his slippers to look for ^roooo
for a postcard up up O Sweetheart May wouldnt a thing like that
simply bore you stiff to extinction actually too stupid even to take his
boots off now what could you make of a man like that Id rather die 20
times over than marry another of their sex of course hed never find
another woman like me to put up with him the way I do know me
come sleep with me yes and he knows that too at the bottom of his
heart take that Mrs Maybrick that poisoned her husband for what I
wonder in love with some other man yes it was found out on her wasnt
she the downright villain to go and do a thing like that of course some
men can be dreadfully aggravating drive you mad and always the worst
word in the world what do they ask us to marry them for if were so
bad as all that comes to yes because they cant get on without us white
Arsenic she put in his tea off flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it
that if I asked him hed say its from the Greek leave us as wise as we
were before she must have been madly in love with the other fellow
to run the chance of being hanged O she didnt care if that was her
nature what could she do besides theyre not brutes enough to go and
hang a woman surely are they

theyre all so different Boylan talking about the shape of my foot he

704

noticed at once even before he was introduced when I was in the
D B C with Poldy laughing and trying to listen I was waggling my
foot we both ordered 2 teas and plain bread and butter I saw him
looking with his two old maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the
girl where it was what do I care with it dropping out ot me and that
black closed breeches he made me buy takes you half an hour to let
them down wetting all myself always with some brandnew fad every
other week such a long one I did I forgot my suede gloves on the scat
behind that I never got after some robber of a woman and he wanted
me to put it in the Irish Times lost in the ladies lavatory D B C Dame
street finder return to Mrs Marion Bloom and I saw his eyes on mv
feet going out through the turning door he was looking when I looked
back and I went there for tea 2 days after in the hope but he wasnt
now how' did that excite him because I was crossing them when we
were in the other room first he meant the shoes tliat arc too tight to
walk in my hand is nice like that if I only had a ring with the stone
for my month a nice aquamarine 111 stick him tor one and a gold
bracelet I dont like my foot so much still I made him spend once with
my foot the night after Goodwins botcliup of a concert so cold and
windy it was well we had that rum in the house to mull and the fire
wasnt black out when he asked to take off my stockings lying on the
hearthrug in Lombard street well and another time it was my muddy
boots hed like me to walk in all the horses dung I could find but of
course hes not natural like the rest of the world that 1 what did he say
I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her what docs
that mean I asked him I forget what he said because the stoppress
edition just passed and the man with the curly hair in the Lucan dairy
thats so polite I think I saw his face before somewhere I noticed him
when I was tasting the butter so I took my time Bartcll dArcy too that
he used to make fun of when he commenced kissing me on the choir
stairs after I sang Gounods Ave Maria what are we w aiting for O my
heart kiss me straight on the brow and part which is my brown part
he was pretty hot for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was always
raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he used his mouth
singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do that there in a place like
that I dont sec anything so terrible about it 111 tell him about that some
day not now and surprise him ay and Til take him there and show him
the very place too we did it so now there you arc like it or lump it he
thinks nothing can happen without him knowing he hadnt an idea about

70s 2Z

niv niotficr till we were engaged otherwise hed never have got me so
cheap as he did lie was lo times worse himself anyhow begging me
to give him a tiny bit cot off my drawers that was the evening coming
along Kenilworth S(|iiare he kissed me in the eve of mv glove and I
had to take it ort asking me questions is it permitted to inquire the
shape ot my bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of
me when I saw him slip it into his pocket of course lies mad on the subject
of drawers tliats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced
tilings on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels even
when Milly and I were out with him at the open air fete that one in
the cream muslin standing right against the sun so he could sec every
atom she had on when he saw me from behind following in the rain
I saw him before he saw me however standing at the corner of the
Harolds cross road with a new raincoat on him with the muffler in the
Zingari colours to show off his complexion and the brown hat looking
slyboots as usual what was he doing there where hed no business they
can go and get whatever they like from anything at all with a skirt
on it and were not to ask any questions but they w'ant to know where
were you where are you going I could feel him coming along skulking
after me his eyes on my neck he had been keeping aw-ay from the house
he felt it was getting too warm for him so I half turned and stopped
then he pestered me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching
him he said my openwork sleeves were too cold for the rain anything
for an excuse to put his hand anear me drawers drawers the whole
blessed time till I promised to give him the pair off my doll to carry
about in his waistcoat pocket 0 Maria Santissima he did look a big
fool dreeping in the rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry
to look at them and besecched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had
on with sunray pleats that there w'as nobody he said hed kneel down
in the wet if I didnt so persevering he would too and ruin his new
raincoat you never know what freak theyd take alone with you theyre
so savage for it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched
his trousers outside the way I used to Gardner after with my ring hand
to keep him from doing worse where it was too public I was dying to
find out was he circumcised he was shaking like a jelly all over they
want to do everything too quick take all the pleasure out of it and
father waiting all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my
purse in the butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver then
he wrote me that letter with all those words in it how could he have

706

the face to any woman after his company manners making it so
awkward after when we met asking me have 1 oti'ended you with my
eyelids down of course he saw I wasnt he had a tew brains not like that
other fool Henny Doyle he was always breaking or tearing something
in the charades I hate an unlucky man and if I knew what it meant of
course I had to say no for form sake dont understand you 1 said and
wasnt it natural so it is of course it used to be written up with a picture
of a womans on that wall in Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find
anyw'hcre only for children seeing it too young then writing a letter
every morning sometimes twice a day I liked the way he made love
then he knew the way to take a woman when he sent me the 8 big
poppies because mine was the 8th then I wrote the night he kissed
my heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it simply it makes you
feel like nothing on earth but he never knew how to embrace well like
Gardner I hope hell come on Monday as he said at the same time tour
I hate people who come at all hours answer the door you think its the
vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the door ot the
filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old frostyface Goodwin called
about the concert in Lombard street and I just after dinner all fluslied
and tossed w-ith boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say
Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his w^ay it was impossible
to be more respectful nobody to say youre out you have to peep out
through the blind like the messengerboy today I thought it w-as a
puloff first him sending the port and the peaches first and I was just
beginning to yawn with nerves thinking he was trying to make a fool
of me w'hen I knew his tattarrattat at the door he must have been a bit
late because it was 1/4 after 3 when 1 saw the 2 Dcdalus girls coming
from school I never know the time even that watch he gave me never
seems to go properly Id w'ant to get it looked after when I threw the
penny to that lame sailor for England home and beauty w'hcn I was
whistling there is a charming girl I love and I hadnt even put on my
clean shift or pow'dcred myself or a thing then this day week were to
go to Belfast just as well he has to go to Ennis his fathers anniversary
the 27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose our rooms at the hotel
were beside each other and any fooling went on in the new bed I
couldnt tell him to stop and not bother me with him in the next room
or perhaps some protestant clergyman with a cough knocking on the
wall then he wouldnt believe next day wx didnt do something its all
very well a husband but you cant fool a lover after me telling him we

707

never did an) thing of course lie didnt believe me no its better hes going
where he is besides something always happens with liim the time going
to the Mallow Concert at Maryborough ordering boiling soup for the
two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the platform with the
soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of it hadnt he the nerve and
the waiter after him making a holy show of us screeching and confusion
for the engine to start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two
gentlemen in the 3rd class carriage said he was quite right so he was
too hes so pigheaded sometimes when he gets a thing into liis head a
good job he vt as able to open the carriage door wth his knife or theyd
have taken us on to Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge on
him O I love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I
wonder will he take a ist class for me he might want to do it in the
train by tipping the guard well O I suppose therell be the usual idiots
of men gaping at us with their eyes as stupid as ever they can possibly
be that was an exceptional man that common workman that left us
alone in the carriage that day going to Howth Id like to find out
something about him 1 or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have to look out
of the window all the nicer then coming back suppose I never came
back w'hat would they say eloped with him that gets you on on the
stage the last concert I sang at where its over a year ago when was it
St Teresas hall Clarendon St little chits of missies they have now
singing Kathleen Kearney and her like on account of father being in
the army and my singing the absentminded beggar and wearing a
brooch for lord Roberts when I had the map of it all and Poldy not
Irish enough was it him managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him
like he got me on to sing in the Stabat Mater by going around saying
he was putting Lead Kindly Light to music I put him up to that till
the jesuits found out he was a freemason thumping the piano lead Thou
me on copied from some old opera yes and he was going about with
some of them Sinner Fein lately or whatever they call themselves
talking his usual trash and nonsense he says that little man he showed
me without the neck is very intelligent the coming man Griffith is he
w’ell he doesnt look it thats all I can say still it must have been him he
knew there was a boycott I hate the mention of politics after the war
that Pretoria and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where Gardner Lieut
Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Rgt of enteric fever he was a lovely
fellow in khaki and just the right height over me Im sure he was brave
too he said I was lovely the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal lock

708

my Irish beauty he was pale with excitement about going away or
wed be seen from the road he couldnt stand properly and I so hot as I
never felt they could have made their peace in the beginning or old
oom Paul and the rest of the old Krugers go and fight it out between
them instead of dragging on for years killing any finelooking men
there were with their fever if he was even decently shot it wouldnt
have been so bad I love to see a regiment pass in review the first time
I saw the Spanish cavalry at La Roque it was lovely after looking across
the bay from Algeciras ail the lights of the rock like fireflies or those
sham battles on the i 5 acres the Black Watch with their kilts in time
at the march past the loth hussars the prince of Wales own or the
lancers O the lancers theyre grand or the Dublins that won Tugela
his father made his money over selling the horses for the cavalry well
he could buy me a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave theyve
lovely linen up there or one of those nice kimono things I must buy
a mothball like I had before to keep in the drawer with them it would
be exciting going around with him shopping buying those things in
a new city better leave this ring behind want to keep turning and
turning to get it over the knuckle there or they might bell it round the
town in their papers or tell the police on me but theyd think were
married O let them all go and smother themselves for the fat lot 1 care
he has plenty of money and hes not a marrying man so somebody
better get it out of him if I could find out whether he likes me 1 looked
a bit washy of course when I looked close in the handglass powdering
a mirror never gives you the expression besides scrooching down on
me like that all the time with his big hipbones hes heavy too with his
hairy chest for this heat always having to lie down for them better for
him put it into me from behind the way Mrs Mastiansky told me her
husband made her like the dogs do it and stick out her tongue as tar
as ever she could and he so quiet and mild with his tingating cither can
vou ever be up to men the way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue
suit he had on and stylish tie and socks with the skyblue silk things on
them hes certainly welloff I know by the cut his clothes have and his
heavy watch but he was like a perfect devil for a few minutes attc? he
came back with the stop press tearing up the tickets and swearing blazes
because he lost 20 quid he said he lost over that outsider that won
and half he put on for me on account of Lenehans tip cursing him to
"e lowest p^ts that sponger he was making free with me a ter the
Glcncrec dinner coming back that long joult over the featherbed

709

mountain atttr tfie lord Mayor looking at me with his dirty eyes \'al
Dillon tliat big heathen I first noticed him at dessert when I was
cracking the nuts with my teeth I wislied I could have picked every
morsel of that chicken out of my fingers it was so tasty and browned
and as tender as anything only for I didnt want to eat everything on
my plate those forks and fishsHcers were hallmarked silver too I wish
I had some I could easily have slipped a couple into my muft when I
was playing with them then always hanging out of them for money
in a restaurant for the bit you put down your throat we have to be
thankful for our mangy cup of tea itself as a great compliment to be
noticed the way the world is divided in any case if its going to go on
I want at least two other good chemises for one thing and but I dont
know what kind of drawers he likes none at all I think didnt he say
yes and half the girls in Gibraltar never wore them cither naked as
God made them that Andalusian singing her Manola she didnt make
much secret of what she hadnt yes and the second pair of silkette
stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have brought them
back to Lewers this morning and kick up a row and made that one
change them only not to upset myself and run the risk of walking into
him and ruining the whole thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id
want advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman w’ith elastic gores on the
hips he saved the one I have but thats no good what did they say they
give a delightful figure line 1 1/6 obviating that unsightly broad appear-
ance across the low'er back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big 111
have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it
the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his
money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent at Xmas
a cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret that
he couldnt get anyone to drink God spare his spit for fear hed die of
the drouth or I must do a few breathing exercises I wonder is that
antifat any good might overdo it thin ones arc not so much the fashion
now garters that much I have the violet pair I wore today thats all he
bought me out of the cheque he got on the first O no there was the face
lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my skin like new I
told him over aijd over again get that made up in the same place and
dont forget it God only knows whether he did after all I said to him 111
know by the bottle anyway if not I suppose 111 only have to wash in
my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that, opoponax and
violet I thought it was beginning to look coarse or old a bit the skin

710

underneath is much finer where it peeled off there on my finger after
the burn its a pity it isnt all like that and the tour paltry handkerchiefs
about 6/- in all surc you cant get on in this world without style all
going in food and rent* when I get it 111 lash it around 1 tell you in fine
style 1 always want to throw a handful of tea into the pot measuring
and mincing if I buy a pair of old brogues itself do you like those new
shoes yes how much were they Ivc no clothes at all the brown costume
and the skirt and jacket and the one at the cleaners 3 whats that for any
woman cutting up this old hat and patching up the other the men
wont look at you and women try to walk on you because they know
youve no man then with all the things getting dearer every day for the
4 years more I have of life up to 3 5 no Im what am I at all III be 3 3 m
September will 1 what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith shes much
older than me I saw her when I was out last week her beautys on the
wane she was a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down
to her w-aist tossing it back like that like Kitty OShca in Grantham
street isl thing I did every morning to look across see her combing
it as if she loved it and was full of it pity I only got to know her the
day before we left and that Mrs Langtry the Jersey Lily the prince of
Wales was in love with I suppose hes like the first man going the roads
only for the name of a king theyre all made the one way only a black
mans Id like to try a beauty up to what was she 45 there w-as some
funny story about the jealous old husband what w-as it all and an oyster
knife he went no he made her wear a kind of a tin thing around her
and the prince of Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be true a
thing like that like some of those books he brings me the works of
Master Francois somebody supposed to be a priest about a child born
out of her car because her bumgut fell out a nice word for any priest
to write and her a-c as if any fool wouldnt know what that meant I
hate that pretending of all things with the old blackguards face on him
anybody can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair Tyrants he
brought me that twice I remember when I came to page 50 the part
about where she hangs him up out of a hook with a cord fiagcllate sure
thercs nothing for a woman in that all invention made up about he
drinking .h?chan.pagn= out of her slipper f « /he bdl was over
like the infant Jesus in the crib at Inchicore m the Blessed Virgms arms
sure no woman could have a child that big taken out of her and I
thought first it came out of her side because how could she go to the
chamber when she wanted to and she a rich lady of course she felt

711

lionoured H. R. H. he was in Gibraltar the year I was born I bet he
found lilies there too where he planted the tree he planted more than
that in his time he might have planted me too if hed come a bit sooner
then I wouldnt be here as I am he ought to chuck that Freeman with
the paltry few shillings he knocks out of it and go into an office or
something where hed get regular pay or a bank where they could put
him up on a throne to count the money all the day of course he prefers
plottering about the house so you cant stir with him any side whats
vour programme today I wish hed even smoke a pipe like father to
get the smell of a man or pretending to be mooching about for
advertisements when he could have been in Mr Cuffes still only for
what he did then sending me to try and patch it up I could have got
him promoted there to be the manager he gave me a great mirada
once or twice first he was as stiff as the mischief really and truly Mrs
Bloom only I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy dress that I lost
the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but theyre coming into
fashion again I bought it simply to please him I knew it was no good
by the finish pity I changed my mind of going to Todd and Burns
as 1 said and not Lees it was just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot
of trash I hate those rich shops get on your nerves nothing kills me
altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a womans dress
and cooking mathcring everything he can scour off the shelves into it
if I went by his advices every blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes
take that thats alright the one like a wedding cake standing up miles
off my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming down on
my backside on pins and needles about the shop girl in that place in
Grafton street I had the misfortune to bring him into and she as
insolent as ever she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid were
giving you too much trouble whats she there for but I stared it out
of her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder but he changed the
second time he looked Poldy pigheaded as usual like the soup but I
could see him looking very hard at my chest when he stood up to
open the door for me it was nice of him to show me out in any case Im
extremely sorry Mrs Bloom believe me without making it too marked
the first time after him being insulted and me being supposed to be his
wife I just half smiled I know my chest was out that way at the door
when he said Im extremely sorry and Im sure you were
yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so
long he made me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this

7U

one anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the least thing III get him to keep
that up and III take those eggs beaten up with marsala fatten them out
for him what are all those veins and things curious the way its made
2 the same in ease of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty placed
up there like those statues in the museum one of them pretending to
hide it with her hand are thev so beautiful of course compared with

what a man looks like with his two bags full and his other thing
hanging down out of him or sticking up at you like a hatrack no
wonder they hide it with a cabbageleaf the woman is beauty of course
thats admitted w-hen he said I could pose for a picture naked to some
rich fellow’ in Holies street when he lost the job in Helys and I was
selling the clothes and strumming in the cotfee palace would I be like
that bath of the nymph with my hair down yes only shes younger or
Im a little like that dirty bitch in that Spanish photo he has the nymphs
used they go about like that I asked him that disgusting Cameron
highlander behind the meat market or that other wretch with the red
head behind the tree where the statue of the fish used to be when I
was passing pretending he was pissing standing out for me to sec it
with his babyclothcs up to one side the Queens own they were a nice
lot its well the Surreys relieved them theyre alw'ays trying to show it
to you every time nearly I passed outside the mens greenhouse near
the Harcourt street station just to try some fellow or other trying to
catch my eye or if it was i of the 7 wonders of the world O and the
stink of those rotten places the night coming home with Poldy after
the Comerfords party oranges and lemonade to make you feel nice
and watery I went into i of them it was so biting cold I couldnt keep
it when was that 93 the canal was frozen yes it w'as a few months after
a pity a couple of the Camerons werent there to sec me squatting in
the rnens place mcadcro I tried to draw a picture of it before I tore it
up like a sausage or something I wonder theyre not afraid going about
of eetting a kick or a bang or something there and that word met
sornething with hoses in it and he came out with some jawbreakers
about the incarnation he never can explain a thing simply the way a
body can understand then he goes and burns the bottom out of the
pan all for his Kidney this one not so much theres the mark of his
teeth still where he tried to bite the nipple I had to scream
they fearful trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk Milly
enough for two what was the reason of that he said I could have got a
pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled out the mormng that delicate

^ 7>3

looking studcnt-that stopped in No 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly

cjoght me washing through the w'indow only for I snapped up the

towel to my face that was his studenting hurt me they used to weaning

her till lie got doctor Brady to give me the Belladonna prescription I

had to get him to suck them they were so hard he said it was sweeter

and thicker than cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea w’ell hes

bevond everything I declare somebody ought to put him in the budget

if I only could remember the one half of the things and write a book

out of it the w'orks of Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the

skin much an hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind

#

of a big infant I had at me they want everything in their mouth all
the pleasure those men get out of a woman I can feel his mouth O Lord
I must stretch myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go
with and come again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream
it when he made me spend the 2 nd time tickling me behind with his
finger I was coming for about 5 minutes with my legs round him I
had to hug him after O Lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things
fuck or shit or anything at all only not to look ugly or those lines from
the strain who knows the way hed take it you want to feel your way
with a man theyre not all like him thank God some of them want you
to be so nice about it I noticed the contrast he docs it and doesnt talk
I gave my eyes that look with my hair a bit loose from the tumbling
and my tongue between my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday
Friday one Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till
Monday

frsecccccccfronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those
engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over
and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweet sonnnng the
poor men that have to be out all the night from their wives and families
in those roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I burned the
half of those old Freemans and Photo bits leaving things like that lying
around hes getting very careless and threw the rest of them up in the
W C 111 get him to cut them tomorrow for me instead of having them
there for the next year to get a few pence for them have him asking
wheres last Januarys paper and all those old overcoats I bundled out
of the hall making the place hotter than it is the rain was lovely just
after n>y beauty sleep I thought it was going to get like Gibraltar my
goodness the heat there before the levanter came on black as night and
the glare of the rock standing up in it like a big giant compared with

7H

their 3 Rock mountain they think is so great with the red sentries here
and there the poplar?, and they all whitchot and the mosquito nets and
the smell of the rainwater in those tanks watching the sun all the time
weltering down on you faded all that lovely frock fathers friend Mrs
Stanhope sent me from the B Marche Paris what a shame my dearest
Doggerina she wrote on what she was very nice whats this her other
name was just a P C to tell you I sent the little present have just had
a jolly warm bath and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it wogger she
called him wogger wd give anything to be back in Gib and hear you
sing in old Madrid or Waiting Conconc is the name of those exercises
he bought me one of those new some word I couldnt make out shawls
amusing things but tear for the least thing still theyre lovely I think
dont you will always think of the lovely teas we had together scrump-
tious currant scones and raspberry w'afers I adore w’cll now’ dearest
Doggerina be sure and write soon kind she left out regards to your
father also Captain Grove with love yrs affly x x x x x she didnt look a
bit married just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was
awfully fond of me when he held down the wire w-ith his foot for me
to step over at the bullfight at La Linea when that matador Gomc2
was given the bulls car clothes we have to wear whoever invented them
expecting you to w’alk up Killincy hill then for example at that picnic
all slayscd up you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crow’d run or
jump out of the way thats why I was afraid when that other ferocious
old Bull began to charge the bandcrillos with the sashes and the 2
things in their hats and the brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the
women were as bad in their nice white mantillas ripping all the whole
insides out of those poor horses I never heard of such a thing in all my
life yes he used to break his heart at me taking olT the dog barking
in bell lane poor brute and it sick what became of them ever I suppose
theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through a mist makes
you feel so old I made the scones of course I had everything all to
myself then a girl Hester we used to compare our hair mine was
thicker than hers she showed me how to’ settle it at the back when 1
put it up and whats this else how to make a knot on a thread with the
one hand we were like cousins what age was I then the night of the
storm I slept in her bed she had her arms round me then we were
fighting in the morning with the pillow what fun he was watching me
whenever he got an opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade
when I was with father and Captain Grove I looked up at the church

7*5

first and then at the windows then down and our eyes met I felt some-
thing go through me like all needles my eyes were dancing I remember
after when I looked at myself in the glass hardly recognised myself
the change I had a splendid skin from the sun and the excitement like
a rose I didn’t get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been nice on account
of her but I could have stopped it in time she gave me the Moonstone
to read that was the first I read of Wilkie Collins East Lynne I read
and the shadow' of Ashlydyat Mrs Henry Wood Henry Dunbar by
that other woman I lent him afterw’ards with Mulveys photo in it so
as he see I w'asnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram Molly bawn
she gave me by Mrs Hungerford on account of the name I dont like
books with a Molly in them like that one he brought me about the
one from Flanders a whore always shoplifting anything she could cloth
and stuff and yards of it this blanket is too heavy on me thats better I
havent even one decent nightdress this thing gets all rolled up under
me besides him and his fooling thats better I used to be weltering then
in the heat my shift drenched with the sw’cat stuck in the cheeks of my
bottom on the chair when I stood up they were so fattish and firm
when I got up on the sofa cushions to see with my clothes up and the
bugs tons of them at night and the mosquito nets I couldnt read a line
Lord how long ago it seems centuries of course they never come back
and she didnt put her address right on it cither she may have noticed
her wogger people were always going aw-ay and we never I remember
that day with the waves and the boats with their high heads rocking
and the swell of the ship those Officers uniforms on shore leave made
me seasick he didnt say anything he w'as very serious I had the high
buttoned boots on and my skirt was blowing she kissed me six or seven
times didnt I cry yes I believe I did or near it my lips were taittering
when I said goodbye she had a Gorgeous wrap of some special kind of
blue colour on her for the voyage made very peculiarly to one side
like and it was extremely pretty it got as dull as the devil a‘‘tcr they went
I was almost planning to run away mad out of it somewhere were never
easy where we arc father or aunt or marriage waiting always waiting to
guiiiide him toooo me w-aiting nor speeced his flying feet their damn
guns bursting and booming all over the shop especially the Queens
birthday and throwing everything down in all directions if you didnt
open the windows when general Ulysses Grant whoever he was or did
supposed to be some great fellow- landed off the ship and old Sprague
the consul that was there from before the flood dressed up poor man

716

and he in mourning for the son then the same old reveille in the
morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate poor devils of soldiers
walking about with messtins smelling the place more than the old long-
bearded jews in their jellibces and leviies assembly and sound clear
and gunfire for the men to cross the lines and the warden marching
with his keys to lock the gates and the bagpipes and only Captain
Groves and father talking about Rorkes drift and Plevna and sir
Garnet Wolsclcy and Gordon at Khartoum lighting their pipes for
them cverytime they went out drunken old devil with his grog on the
windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his nose trying to think
of some other dirty story to tell up in a corner but he never forgot
himself when I was there sending me out of the room on some blind
excuse paying his compliments the Bushmills whisky talking of course
but hed do the same to the next woman that came along I supposed he
died of galloping drink ages ago the days like years not a letter from a
living soul except the odd few I posted to myself with bits of paper
in them so bored sometimes I could fight with my nails listening to
that old Arab with the one eye and his hcass of an instrument singing
his hcah hcah aheah all my compriments on your hotchapotch of your
heass as bad as now with the hands hanging oflF me looking out of the
window if there was a nice fellow even in the opposite house that
medical in Holies street the nurse was after when I put on my gloves
and hat at the window to show I was going out not a notion what I
meant arent they thick never understand what you say even youd want
to print it up on a big poster for them not even if you shake hands
twice with the left he didnt recognise me either when I half frowned
at him outside Westland row chapel where docs their great intelligence
come in Id like to know grey matter they have it all in their tail if
you ask me those country gougers up in the City Arms intelligence
they had a damn sight less than the bulls and cows they were selling
the meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to swindle
me with the wrong bill he took out of his hat what a pair of paws and
pots and pans and kettles to mend any broken bottles for a poor man
today and no visitors or post ever except his cheques or some advertise-
ment like that wonderworker they sent him addressed dear Madam
only his letter and the card from Milly this morning see she wrote a
letter to him who did I get the last letter from O Mrs Dwenn now
whatever possessed her to write after so many years to know the rcape
I had for pisto madrilcno Floey DUlon since she wrote to say she was

717

married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I hear with a villa
anu eight rooms her father was an awfully nice man he was near seventy
always good humour well now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie thcrcs
the pyannyer that was a solid silver coffee service he had too on the
mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate people that have
always their poor story to tell everybody has their own troubles that
poor Nancy Blake died a month ago of acute pneumonia well I didnt
know her so well as all that she was Flocys friend more than mine its
a bother having to answer he always tells me the wrong things and no
stops to say like making a speech your sad bereavement symphathy I
always make that mistake and newphew with 2 double yous in I hope
hell write me a longer letter the next time if its a thing he really likes
me 0 thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me what 1
badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at all
in this place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me
a lovcletter his wasnt much and I told him he could write what he
liked yours ever Hugh Boylan in Old Madrid silly women believe
love is sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I suppose thered be some
truth in it true or no it fills up your whole day and life always something
to think about every moment and see it all around you like a new world
I could write the answer in bed to let him imagine me short just a few
words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used to write to the
fellow that was something in the four courts that jilted her after out
of the ladies letterwriter when 1 told her to say a few simple words he
could twist how he liked not acting with prccipit precipitancy with
equal candour the greatest earthly happiness answer to a gentlemans
proposal affirmatively my goodness theres nothing else its all very fine
for them but as for being a woman as soon as youre old they might
as well throw you out in the bottom of the ashpit.

Mulvcys was the first when I was in bed that morning and Mr.
Rubio brought it in with the coffee she stood there standing when I
asked her to hand me and I pointing at them I couldnt think of the
word a hairpin to open it with ah horquilla disobliging old thing and it
staring her in the face with her switch of false hair on her and vain
about her appearance ugly as she was near 8o or a too her face a mass
of wrinkles with all her religion domineering because she never could
get over the Atlantic fleet coming in half the ships of the world and
the Union Jack flying with all her carabineros because 4 drunken
English sailors took all the rock from them and because I didnt run

718

into mass often enough in Santa Maria to please her with her shawl
up on her except when there was a marriage on with all her miracles
of the saints and her black blessed virgin with the silver dress and the
sun dancing 3 times on Easter Sunday morning and when the priest
was going by with the bell bringing the Vatican to the dying blessing
herself for his Majestad an admirer he signed it I near jumped out of
my skin 1 wanted to pick him up when I saw him following me along
the Calle Real in the shop window then he tipped me just in passing
1 never thought hed write making an appointment 1 had it inside my
petticoat bodice all day reading it up m every hole and corner while
father was up at the drill instructing to find out by the handwriting or
the language of stamps singing I remember shall 1 wear a white rose
and I wanted to put on the old stupid clock to near the time he was
the first man kissed me under the Moorish wall my sweetlicart when a
boy it never entered my head what kissing meant till he put his tongue
in my mouth his mouth w'as sweetlikc young I put my knee up to
him a few times to learn ilie way w’hat did I tell him I was engaged
for fun to the son of a Spanish nobleman named Don Miguel dc la
Flora and he believed that I was to be married to him in 3 years time
theres many a true word spoken in jest there is a fiower that bloomcih
a few things I told him true about myself just for him to be imagining
the Spanish girls he didnt like I suppose one of them wouldnt have
him I got him excited he crushed all the fiowers on my bosom he
brought me he couldnt count the pesetas and the perragordas till 1
taught him Cappoquin he came from he said on the Blackwater but
it was too short then the day before he left May yes it w-as May w-hen
the infant king of Spain was born Im always like that in the spring Id
like a new fellow every year up on the tiptop under the rockgun near
OHaras tower I told him it was struck by lightning and all about tlic
old Barbary apes they sent to Clapham without a tail careering all
over the show on each others back Mrs Rubio said she was a replar

old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of Inces '*7^

stones at you if you went ancar he was looking at me 1 had that white
blouse on open at the front to encourage him as much as 1 could
without too openly they were just begmmng to be P*^‘^P ‘
tired wc lay over the firtree cove a wild place I suppose
highest rock in existence the galleries and casemates and those frightfu
rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever they call
them hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots Im

7*9

sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa when
they die the ships out far like chips that was the Malta boat passing
yes the sea and the sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever
he caressed them outside they love doing that its the roundness there
I was leaning over him with my white riccstraw hat to take the newness
out of it the left side of my face the best my blouse open for his last
day transparent kind of shirt he had I could sec his chest pink he
wanted to touch mine with his for a moment but I wouldn’t let him
he was awfully put out first for fear you never know consumption
or leave me with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told me
that one drop even if it got into you at all after I tried with the Banana
but 1 was afraid it might break and get lost up in me somewhere yes
because they once took something down out of a woman that was up
there for years covered with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there
where they come out of youd think they could never get far enough
up and then theyre done with you in a way till the next time yes
because thercs a wonderful feeling there all the time so tender how did
we finish it off yes O yes I pulled him off into my handkerchief pre-
tending not to be excited but I opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch
me inside my petticoat I had a skirt opening up the side I tortured the
life out of him first tickling him I loved rousing that dog in the hotel
rrrsssst awokwokawok his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was
shy all the same I liked him like that morning I made him blush a little
when I got over him that way when I unbuttoned him and took his
out and drew back the skin it had a kind of eye in it theyre all Buttons
men down the middle on the wrong side of them Molly darling he
called me what was his name Jack Joe Harry Mulvcy was it yes 1
think a lieutenant he was rather fair he had a laughing kind of a voice
so I went around to the whatyoucallit everything was whatyoucallit
moustache had he he said hed come back Lord its just like yesterday
to me and if I was married hed do it to me and I promised him yes
faithfully Id let him block me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed
or a Captain or admiral its nearly 20 years if I said firtree cove he
w’ould if he came up behind me and put his hands over my eyes to
guess who I might recognise him hes young still about 40 perhaps hes
married some girl on the black water and is quite changed they all do
they havent half the character a woman has she little knows what I did
with hPr beloved husband before he ever dreamt of her in broad
daylight too in the sight of the whole world you might say they could

720

have put an article about it in the Chronicle 1 was a bit wild after
when I blew out the old bag the biscuits were in from Bcnady Bros
and exploded it Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and pigeons
screaming coming back the same way that we went over middle hill
round by the old guardhouse and the jews burial place pretending to
read out the Hebrew on them I wanted to fire his pistol he said he
hadnt one he didnt know what to make of me with his peaked cap
on that he always wore crooked as often as I settled it straight
H M S Calypso swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke ofi the
altar his long preach about womans higher functions about girls now
riding the bicycle and wearing peak caps and the new woman bloomers
God send him sense and me more money I suppose theyre called after
him I never thought that would be my name Bloom when I used to
write it in print to see how it looked on a visiting card or practising for
the butcher and oblige M Bloom yourc looking blooming Josie used
to say after I married him well its better than Breen or Briggs docs
brig or those awful names with bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or
some other kind of a bottom Mulvcy I wouldni go mad about cither
or suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan my mother whoever she was
might have given me a nicer name the Lord knows after the lovely one
she had Lunita Laredo the fun we had running along Willis road to
Europa point twisting in and out all round the other side of Jcncy they
were shaking and dancing about in my blouse like Millys little ones
now when she runs up the stairs I loved looking down at them 1 was
jumping up at the pepper trees and the white poplars pulling the leaves
off and throwing them at him he went to India he was to write the
voyages those men have to make to the ends of the world and back
its the least they might get a squeeze or two at a woman while they
can going out to be drowned or blown up somewhere I went up wind-
mill hill to the flats that Sunday morning with Captain Rubios that
was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed have one or two frotn
on board I wore that frock from the B Marche Pans and the coral
necklace the straits shining I could Sfc over to Morocco almost the
bav of Tangier white and the Atlas mountain with snow on it and the
strLs like a river so clear Harry Molly Darling I was thinking of him
on the sea all the time after at mass when my petucoat began to sUp
down at the elevation weeks and weeks I kept the handkerchief under
my piUow for the smell of him there w as no decent perfume to be got
in that Gibraltar only that cheap peau despagne that faded and left a

721 3 ^

stink on you more than anything else I wanted to give him a memento
he gave mo that clumsy Claddagh ring for luck that I gave Gardner
going to South Africa where those Boers killed him with their war
and fever but they were well beaten all the same as if it brought its
bad luck with it like an opal or pearl must have been pure i 6 carat
gold because it was very heavy I can see his face clean shaven
Frsececceccceecceeccceefrong that train again w’eeping tone once in the
dear deacad days beyond recall close my eyes breath my lips forward
kiss sad look eyes, open piano ere oer the world the mists began I hate
that istsbeg comes loves sweet ssooooooong 111 let that out full when
1 get in front of the footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her lot of
squealers Miss This Miss That Miss Theother lot of sparrowfarts
skitting around talking about politics they know as much about as my
backside anything in the world to make themselves someway interest-
ing Irish homemade beauties soldiers daughter am I av and whose arc
you bootmakers and publicans I beg your pardon road i thought you
were a wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off their tcc: if ever they got
a chance of walking down the Alameda on an officers arm like me on
the bandnight my eyes Hash my bust that they havent passion God help
their poor head I knew more about men and life when 1 was 15 than
theyll all know at 50 they dont know how to sing a song like that
Gardner said no man could look at my mouth and teeth smiling like
that and not think of it I was afraid he mightnt like my accent first
he so English all father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my mothers
eyes and figure anyhow he always said theyre so snotty about them-
selves some of those cads he wasnt a bit like that he was dead gone on my
lips let them get a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter
like mine or see if they can excite a swell with money that can pick
and choose whoever he wants like Boylan to do it 4 or 5 times locked
in each others arms or the voice either I could have been a prima donna
only I married him comes looooves old deep down chin back not too
much make it double My Ladys Bower is too long for an cncore about
the moated grange at twilight and vaulted rooms yes 111 sing Winds
that blow from the south that he gave after the choirstairs performance
III change that lace on my black dress to show off my bubs and 111 yes
by God 111 get that big fan mended make them burst with envy my
hole is itching me always when I think of him I feel I want to I feel
some wind in me better go easy not wake him have him at it again
slobbering after washing every bit of myself back belly and sides if

wc had even a bath itbelt or iny own room anvway 1 wish hed sleep
in some bed by hiinsclt with his cold lect on tne give us room even to
let a fart God or do the least thing better yes hold them like that a
bit on my i>ide piano quictlv swcccee there-' that tram lar away
piatiissimo ccececce one more song

that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go tree who knows
if that pork chop I took with my cup of tea after was quite good with
the heat I couldnt smell anything oH it Im sure that queerlooking man
in the porkbutchers is a great rogue I hope that lamp is not smoking
fill my nose up with smuts better than liaving him leaving the gas on
all night I couldnt rest easy in my bed in Gibraltar even getting up to
see why am I so damned nervous about that though 1 like it in the
winter its more company O Lord it was rotten cold too that winter
when I was only about ten was I yes I had the big doll with all the
funny clothes dressing her up and undressing that icy w'ind skeciing
across from tliosc mountains the something Nevada sierra nevada
standing at the fire with the little bit of a short shilt I had up to heat
myself I loved dancing about in it then make a race back into bed Im
sure that fellow opposite used to be there the whole time watching with
the lights out in the summer and I in my skin liopping around 1 used
to love myself then stripped at the washstaiul dabbing and creaming
only when it came to the chamber performance I put out the liglit too
so then there were 2 of us Goodbye to my sleep for this night anyhow
I hope hes not going to get in with those medicals leading him astray
to imagine hes young again coming in at 4 in the morning it must be
if not more still he had the manners not to wake me what do they hnd
to gabber about all night squandering money and getting drunker and
drunker couldnt they drink water then he starts giving us his orders
for eggs and tea Findon haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well
have him sitting up like the king of the country pumping the
wrong end of the spoon up and down in his egg wherever he learned
that from and I love to hear him falling up the stairs of a morning with
the cups rattling on the tray and then play with the wt she rubs up
against you for her own sake I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a
woman iways licking and locking but I hate tho.r claws I wondor do
they see anything that we cant staring like that when she sits at the top
of the stairs so ling and listening as I wait always what a robber too
that lovely fresh pllice I bought I think 111 get a bit of fish
or today is it Friday yes I will with some blancmange with black

723

currant Jam like long ago not those 2 lb pots of mixed plum and apple
from tlic London and Newcastle Williams and Woods goes twice as
far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes 111 get a nice piece of
cod IiT) always getting enougli tor 3 forgetting anyway Im sick of that
cN'crlasting butchers meat trom BuckJeys loin chops and leg beef and
rib steak and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck the very name is enough
or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/- each and or let him pay and invite
some other woman for him who Mrs Flcnnng and drive out to the
furry glen or the strawberry beds wed have him examining all the
horses toenails first like he does with the letters no not w’ith Boylan
there yes with some cold veal and ham mixed sandwiches there arc
little houses down at the bottom of the banks there on purpose but its
as hot as blazes he says not a bank holiday anyhow I hate those ruck
of Mary Ann coalboxes out for the day Whit Monday is a cursed day
too no wonder that bee bit him better the seaside but Id never again in
this life get into a boat with him after him at Bray telling the boatmen
he knew how to row if anyone asked could he ride the steeplechase for
the gold cup hed say yes then it came on to get rough the old thing
crookeding about and the weight all down my side telling me to pull
the right reins now pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods
in through through the bottom and his oar slipping out of the stirrup
its a mercy we werent all drow'ned he can swim of course me no thercs
no danger w-hatsoever keep yourself calm in his flannel trousers Id like
to have tattered them down off him before all the people and give him
what that one calls flagellate till he was black and blue do him all the
good in the world only for that longnosed chap I dont know who he is
with that other beauty Burke out of the City Arms hotel was there
spying around as usual on the slip always where he {vasnt wanted if
there was a row’ on you vomit a better face there was no love lost
between us thais i consolation I wonder what kind is that book he
brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other Mr de
Kock I suppose the people gave him that nickname going about with
his tube from one woman to another I couldnt even change my new
w'hitc shoes all ruined with the saltw'ater and the hat I had with that
feather all blowy and tossed on me hew annoying and provoking
because the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines and the
bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock they were fine all
silver in the fishermens baskets old Luigi near a hundred they said
came from Genoa and the tall old chap w'ith the earrings I dont like

724

a man you have to climb up to go get at I suppose theyre all dead and
rotten long ago besides I dont like being alone in this big barracks ot
a place at night I suppose 111 have to put up with it I never brought a
bit of salt in even when we moved in the confusion musical academy
he was going to make on the first fioor drawingroom with a brassplate
or Blooms private hotel he suggested go and ruin himself altogether the
way his father did down in Ennis like all the things he told father he
was going to do and me but I saw through him telling me all the lovely
places we could go for the honeymoon Venice by moonlight with the
gondolas and the lake of Como he had a picture cut out of some
paper of and mandolines and lanterns O how nice 1 said whatever I
liked he was going to do immediately if not sooner will you be my
man will you carry my can he ought to get a leather medal with a putty
rim for all the plans he invents then leaving us here all day you never
know what old beggar at the door for a crust with his long story might
be a tramp and put his foot in the way to prevent me shutting it like
that picture of that hardened criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly
News 20 years in jail then he comes out and murders an old woman tor
her money imagine his poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a
face youd'run miles away from I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the
doors and windows to make sure but its worse again being locked up
like in a prison or a madhouse they ought to be all shot or the cat of
nine tails a big brute like that that would attack a poor o d woman to
murder her in her bed Id cut them off so I would not that hed be much
use still better than nothing the night I was sure I heard burglars in
the kitchen and he went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker
as if he was looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out ot
his wits making as much noise as he possibly could for
benefit there isnt much to steal indeed the Lord knows still its th
feeling especially now with Milly away such an idea for him to send
the girl down there to learn to take photographs on account of h.s
grandfather instead of sending her to Skerrys academy '^here
Lve to learn not like me getting all at school only hed do a thmg 1 ke
that all the same on account of me and Boylan thats why he did it Im
certain the way he plots and plans everything out I couldnt turn round
^th her in the place lately unless I bolted the door first gave me the

fidgets coming in without knocking first when I

the door just as I was washing myself there below with the glove get

on your nerves then doing the loglady all day put her in a glasscase

725

with two at a time to look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off
that little gimcrack statue with her roughness and carelessness before
she left that 1 got that little Italian boy to mend so that you cant see
the join for 2 shillings wouldnt even teem the potatoes for you of
course shes right not to ruin her hands I noticed he was always talking
to her lately at the table explaining things in the paper and she
pretending to understand sly of course that comes from his side of the
house and helping her into her coat but if there was anything wrong
with her its me shed tell not him he cant say I pretend things can he
Im too honest as a matter of fact I suppose he thinks Im finished out
and laid on the shelf well Im not no nor anything like it well see W’cll
see now shes wxll on for flirting too with Tom Devans two sons imitat-
ing me whistling with those romps of Murray girls calling for her can
Milly come out please shes in great demand to pick what they can out
of her round in Nelson street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its
as well he sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds
wanting to go on the skatingrink and smoking their cigarettes through
their nose I smelt it off her dress when I was biting off the thread of
the button I sew’ed on to the bottom of her jacket she couldnt hide
much from me I tell you only I oughtnt to have stitched it and it on
her it brings a parting and the last plumpudding too split in 2 halves
sec it comes out no matter what they say her tongue is a bit too long
for my taste your blouse is open too low' she says to me the pan calling
the kettle blackbottom and I had to tell her not to cock her legs up like
that on show' on the w'indowsill before all the people passing they all
look at her like me when I was her age of course any old rag looks well
on you then a great touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way
in the Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate people
touching me afraid of her life Id crush her skirt with the pleats a lot
of that touching must go on in theatres in the crush in the dark theyre
always trying to wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the pit at the
Gaiety for Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time III ever go there to
be squashed like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes
tipping me there and looking away hes a bit daft I think I saw him
after trying to get near two stylish dressed ladies outside Switzers
window at the same little game I recognised him on the moment the
face and everything but he didnt remember me and she didnt even
W'ant me to kiss her at the Broadstone going away well I hope shell
get someone to dance attendance on her the way I did when she was

726

down with the mumps her glands swollen wheres this and whcrcs that
of course she cant feel anything deep yet 1 never came properly till I
was what 22 or so it went into the wrong place always only the usual
girls nonsense and giggling that Conny Connolly writing to her in
white ink on black paper scaled with scalingwax though she clapped
when the curtain came down because he looked so handsome then we
had Martin Harvey for breakfast dinner and supper I thought to myself
afterwards it must be real love if a man gives up his life for her that
way for nothing I suppose there are few men like that left its hard to
believe in it though unless it really happened to me the majority of
them with not a particle of love in their natures to find two people like
that nowadays full up of each other that would feel the same way as
you do theyre usually a bit foolish in the head his father must have been
a bit queer to go and poison himself after her still poor old man I
suppose he felt lost always making love to my things too the few old
rags I have wanting to pul her hair up at 1 5 my powder too only ruin
her skin on her shes time enough for that all her life after of course shes
restless knowing shes pretty with her lips so red a pity they wont stay
that way I was too but thcrcs no use going to the fair with the thing
answering me like a fishwoman when I asked to go for a half a stone
of potatoes the day wc met Mrs Joe Gallahcr at the trottingm.^ches and
she pretended not to sec us in her trap with Fricry the solicitor wc
werent grand enough till I gave her 2 damn fine cracks across the car
for herself take that now for answering me like that and that tor your
impudence she had me that exasperated of course contradicting 1 was
badtempered too because how was it there was a weed in the tea or 1
didnt sleep the night before cheese I ate was it and I told her over and
over again not to leave knives crossed like that because she has nobody
to cornmand her as she said herself well if he doesnt correct her faith
I will that was the last time she turned on the tcartap I was just like
that myself they darent order me about the place its his fault of course
having the two of us slaving here instead of getting in a woman long
ago am I ever going to have a proper servant again of course then
shed sec him coming Id have to let her know or shed revenge it arcm
they a nuisance that old Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round
after her putting the things into her hands sneezing and farting into
the pots well of course shes old she cant help it a good job I found

that rotten old smelly dishcloth that got lost behind

there was something and opened the window to let out the smell bnng-

727

ing in his friends to entertain them like the night he walked home with
a dog if you please that might have been mad especially Simon
Dedalus son his father such a criticiser with his glasses up with his tall
hat on him at the cricket match and a great big hole in his sock one
thing laughing at the other and his son that got all those prizes for
whatever he won them in the intermediate imagine climbing over the
railings if anybody saw him that knew us wonder he didnt tear a big
hole in his grand funeral trousers as if the one nature gave wasnt
enough for anybody hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen
now is he right in his head I ask pity it wasnt washing day my old pair
of drawers might have been hanging up too on the line on exhibition
for all hed ever care with the ironmould mark the stupid old bundle
burned on them he might think was something else and she never even
rendered down the fat I told her and now shes going such as she was
on account of her paralysed husband getting worse thcres always some-
thing wrong with them disease or they have to go under an operation
or if its not that its drink and he beats her III have to hunt around again
for someone every day I get up thcres some new thing on sweet God
sweet God well when Im stretched out dead in my grave I suppose 111
have some peace I want to get up a minute if Im let wait O Jesus wait
yes that thing has come on me yes now wouldnt that afflict you of
course all the poking and rooting and ploughing he had up in me now
what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt that pester the soul
out of a body unless he likes it some men do God knows thcres always
something wrong with us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual monthly
auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came on me like that the
one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave him to
sec Mrs. Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety something he did
about insurance for him Drimmics I was fit to be tied though I wouldnt
give in with that gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his
glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and his soul
thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled the best I could all in
a swamp leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it out then
to the last tag I w'ont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry supposed to
be a fast play about adultery that idiot in the gallery hissing the woman
adulteress he shouted I suppose he w'cnt and had a woman in the next
lane running round all the back ways after to make up for it I wish he
had what I had then hed boo I bet the cat itself is better off than us
have we too much blood up in us or what O patience above its pouring

728

out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me pregnant as big as he
is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets the clean linen I wore brought it
on too damn it damn it and they always want to see a stain on the bed
to know yourc a virgin for them all thais troubling them theyre such
fools too you could be a widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of
red ink would do or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy
let me up out of this pooh sweets of sin hoever suggested that business
for women what between clothes and cooking and children this damned
old bed too jingling like ihc dickens I suppose they could hear us away
over the other side of the park till I suggested to put the quilt on the
floor with the pillow under mv bottom I wonder is it nicer in the day
I think it is easy I think 111 cut all this hair off me there scalding me I
might look like a young girl wouldnt he get the great suckin the next
time he turned up my clothes on me Id give anything to see his face
wheres the chamber gone easy Ivc a holy horror of its breaking under
me after that old commode I wonder was 1 too heavy sitting on his
knee I made him sit on the easychair purposely when 1 took off on^
my blouse and skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he
oughtnt to be he never felt me 1 hope my breath was sweet after those
kissing comfits easy God I remember one time I could scout it out
straight whistling like a man almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope
theyre bubbles on it for a wad of money from some fellow 111 have to
perfume it in the morning dont forget I bet he never saw^ a better
pair of thighs than that look how white they are the smoothest place
is right there between this bit here how soft like a peach easy God
wouldnt mind being a man and get op on a lovely woman O Lo'-d^'^at
a row youre making like the jersey lily easy O how the waters come

down at Lahore . , • • j , r

who knows is thorc anything the matter wjth my tns.dcs or have I

something growing in me getting that th.ng l.ke that <-cry we k when

was it last I Whit Monday yes its only abont 3 weeks I ought g

to the doctor only it would be like before I marr.ed h.m when I had

that white thing coming from me and Floey n.ade me go

old stick Dr Collins for womens diseases on

vaeina he called it I suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirro s

carpets getting round those rich ones off Stephens green .“P

to him for every little fiddlcfaddlc her vagina and her cochinchma
theyve money of course so theyre all right I wouldnt marry "
if he was the last man in the world besides there something quee

729

their children always smelling around those filthy bitches all sides
asking me if what I did had an offensive odour what did he want me
to do but the one thing gold maybe what a question if I smathered it
all over his wrinkly old face for him with all my compriment I suppose
hed know then and could you pass it easily pass what I thought he
was talking about the rock of Gibraltar the way he put it thats a very
nice invention too by the way only I like letting myself down after in
the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice
cool pins and needles still theres something in it I suppose I always
used to know by Millys when she was a child whether she had worms
or not still all the same paying him for that how much is that doctor
one guinea please and asking me had I frequent omissions where do
those old fellows get all the words they have omissions with his short-
sighted eyes on me cocked sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to
give me chloroform or God knows what else still I liked him when he
sat down to write the thing out frowning so severe his nose intelligent
like that you be damned you lying strap O anything no matter who
except an idiot he was clever enough to spot that of course that was all
thinking of him and his mad crazy letters my Precious one everything
connected with your glorious Body everything underlined that comes
from it is a thing of beauty and of joy for ever something he got out
of some nonsensical book that he had me always at myself 4 or 5 times
a day sometimes and I said I hadnt are you sure O yes I said I am quite
sure in a way that shut him up I knew what was coming next only
natural weakness it was he excited me I don't know how the first night
ever we met when I was living in Rehoboth terrace we stood staring
at one another for about 10 minutes as if we met somewhere I suppose
on account of my being Jewess looking after my mother he used to
amuse me the things he said with the half sloothering smile on him and
all the Doyles said he was going to stand for a member of Parliament
O wasnt I the born fool to believe all his blather about home rule and
the land league sending me that long strool of a song out of the
Huguenots to sing in French to be more classy O beau pays de la
Touraine that I never even sang once explaining and rigmaroling
about religion and persecution he wont let you enjoy anything
naturally then might he as a great favour the very ist opportunity he
got a clfance in Brighton square running into my bedroom pretending
the ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk and sulphur
soap I used to use and the gelatine still round it O I laughed myself

730

sick at him that day Id better not make an all night sitting on this affair
they ought to make chambers a natural size so that a woman could sit
on it properly he kneels down to do it I suppose there isnt in all creation
another man with the habits he has look at the way hes sleeping at the
foot of the bed how can he without a hard bolster its well he doesnt
kick or he might knock out all my teeth breathing with his hand on
his nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet Sunday in
the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a pinatore lying on his side
on his hand with his ten toes sticking out that he said was a bigger
religion than the jews and Our Lords both put together all over Asia
imitating him as hes always imitating everybody I suppose he used
to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big square feet up in his
wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway wheres this those napkins
arc ah yes I know I hope the old press doesnt creak ah I knew it would
hes sleeping hard had a good time somew'herc still she must have given
him great value for his money of course he has to pay tor it from lier

0 this nuisance of a thing I hope theyll have something better for us
in the other world tying ourselves up God help us thats all right for
tonight now' the lumpy old jingly bed always reminds me of old Cohen

1 suppose he scratched himself in it often enough and he thinks father
bought it from Lord Napier that I used to admire when I was a little
girl because I told him easy piano O I like my bed God here we are
as bad as ever after i6 years how many houses were we m at all
Raymond Terrace and Ontario terrace and Lombard street and Holies
street and he goes about whistling every time were on the run again
his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help the men with our
4 sticks of furniture and then the City Arms hotel worse and worse
says Warden Daly that charming place on the landing always some-
body inside praying then leaving all their stinks after them always
know who was in there last every time wer< just getting on right
something happens or he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys and
Mr Cuffes and Drimmics either hes going to be run into prison over
his old lottery tickets that was to be all our salvations or he goes and
gives impudence well have him coming home with the sack soon out
of the Freeman too like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or
the Freemasons then well sec if the little man he showed me dabbling
along in the wet all by himself round by Coadys lane will give him
much consolation that he says is so capable and sincerely Irish he s
indeed judging by the sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait

731

tlicrcs Georges cliurch bells wait 3 quarters the hour wait 2 oclock well
thats a nice hour ot the night for him to be coming home at to anybody
climbing down into the area if anybody saw him 111 knock him off that
little habit tomorrow first III look at his shirt to see or 111 sec if he has
that French letter still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont
know deceitful men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their lies
then why should we tell them even if its the truth they dont believe
you then tucked up in bed like those babies in the Aristocrats Master-
piece he brought me another time as if w-e hadnt enough of that in real
life without some old Aristocrat or whatever his name is disgusting
you more with those rotten pictures children with two heads and no
legs thats the kind of villainy theyre always dreaming about with not
another thing in their empty heads they ought to get slow poison the
half of them then tea and toast for him buttered on both sides and
newlaid eggs I suppose Im nothing any more w’hcn I wouldnt let him
lick me in Holies street one night man man tyrant as ever for the one
thing he slept on the floor half the night naked the way the jews used
when somebody dies belonged to them and wouldnt eat any breakfast
or speak a word wanting to be petted so I thought I stood out enough
tor one time and let him he does it all wrong too thinking only of his
ow'n pleasure his tongue is too flat or I dont know what he forgets
that we then I dont 111 make him do it again if he doesnt mind himself
and lock him down to sleep in the coalccllar with the blackbeetles I
wonder w’as it her Josie ofT her head with my castoffs hes such a born
liar too no hed never have the courage with a married woman thats
why he wants me and Boylan though as for her Denis as she calls him
that forlornlooking spectacle you couldiit call him a husband yes its
some little bitch hes got in with even when I was with him with Milly
at the College races that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on the top
on his nob let us into by the back way he was throwing his sheeps eyes
at tliose two doing skirt duty up and down I tried to wink at him first
no use of course and thats the way his money goes this is the fruits of
Mr Paddy Dignam yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral
in the paper Boylan brought in if they saw a real officers funeral thatd
be something reversed arms muffled drums the poor horse walking
behind in black L Bloom and Tom Kernan that drunken little barrelly
man that bit his tongue off falling dow'n the mens W C drunk in some
place or other and Martin Cunningham and the two Dedaluses and
Fanny MCoys husband white head of cabbage skinny thing with a

732

turn in her eye trying to sing my songs shed want to be born all over
again and her old green dress with the lowncck as she cant attract them
any other way like dabbling on a rainy day I sec it all now plainly
and they call that friendship killing and then burying one another and
they all with their wives and families at home more especially Jack
Power keeping that barmaid he does of course his wife is always sick
or going to be sick or just getting better of it and hes a goodlooking
man still though hes getting a bit grey over the cars theyre a nice lot
all of them well theyre not going to get my husband again into their
clutches if I can help it making fun of him then behind his back I
know well when he goes on with his idiotics because he has sense enough
not to squander every penny piece he earns down their gullets and looks
after his wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Dignam all the
same Im sorry in a way for him what arc his wife and 5 children going
to do unless he was insured comical little teetotum always stuck up
in some pub corner and her or her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you
please come home her widows weeds wont improve her appearance
theyre awfully becoming though if youre goodlooking what men wasnt
he yes he was at the Glencree dinner and Ben Dollard base barrcltone
the'^night he borrowed the swallowtail to sing out of in Holies street
squce2cd and squashed into them and grinning all over his big Dolly
face like a wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look a balmy ballocks
sure enough that must have been a spectacle on the stage iniagmc
paying s/- in the preserved scats for that to sec him and Simon
Dcdalus too he was always turning up half screwed singing the second
verse first the old love is the new was one of his so sweetly sang the
maiden on the hawthorn bough he was always on for flirtyfying too
when I sang Maritana with him at Freddy Mayers private opera he
had a delicious glorious voice Phoebe dearest goodbye rw^jrrhtan he
always sang it not like Barlell dArcy sweet /^r/ goodbye of course he
had the giftof the voice so there was no art in it all over you like a warm
showerbath O Maritana wildwood flower we sang splendidly though it
was a bit too high for my register even transposed and he was married
at the time to May Goulding but then hed say or do something to
knock the good out of it hes a widower now I wonder what sort ts his
son he says hes an author and going to be a university professor of
Italian and Im to take lessons what is he driving at now showing hirn

my photo its not good of me I ought to have dK

thit never looks om of fashion still I look young in it I wonder he didnt

733

make him a present of it altogether and me too after all why not I saw
him driving down to the Kingsbridge station with his father and
mother I was in mourning thats i i years ago now yes hed be 1 1
though what was the good in going into mourning for what was
neither one thing nor the other of course he insisted hed go into
mourning for the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time he was an
innocent boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord Fauntleroy suit
and curly hair like a prince on the stage when I saw him at Mat Dillons
he liked me too I remember they all do wait by God yes wait yes hold
on he was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck union
with a young stranger neither dark nor fair you met before I thought
it meant him but hes no chicken nor a stranger cither besides my face
was turned the other way what was the yth card after that the lo of
spades for a Journey by land then there was a letter on its way and
scandals too the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds for a rise in society
yes wait it all came out and 2 red 8s for new garments look at that and
didnt I dream something too yes there was something about poetry in
it I hope he hasnt long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or standing
up like a red Indian what do they go about like that for only getting
themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked poetry when I
was a girl first I thought he w'as a poet like Byron and not an ounce of
it in his composition I thought he was quite different I wonder is he
too young hes about wait 88 I w'as married 88 Milly is 15 yesterday
89 w'hat age was he then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I suppose hes 20
or more Im not too old for him if hes 23 or 24 I hope hes not that stuck
up university student sort no otherwise he wouldnt go sitting down
in the old kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and talking of course
he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he was out of
Trinity college hes very young to be a professor I hope hes not a
professor like Goodwin was he was a patent professor of John Jameson
they all W'rite about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he
wont find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar
where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so
beautifully coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse
at Europa point the guitar that fellow played was so expressive will I
never go back there again all new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid
III sing that for him theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes
as darkly bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves
young star itll be a change the Lord knows to have an intelligent

734

person to talk to about yourself not always listening to him and Billy
Prcscotts ad and Keyess ad and Tom the Devils ad then if anything
goes wrong in their business we have to suffer Im sure hes very dis-
tinguished Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck
besides hes young those fine young men I could see down in Margate
strand bathing place from the side of the rock standing up in the sun
naked like a God or something and then plunging into the sea with
them why arent all men like that thered be some consolation for a
woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all
day long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to listen
theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him
all over also his lovely young cock there so simply I wouldnt mmd
taking him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking you
to suck it so clean and white he looked with his boyish face 1 would
too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its only like
gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be so clean compared
with those pigs of men I suppose never dream of washing it from l
years end to the other the most of them only thats what gives the
women the moustaches In. sure itll be grand if I can only get in with a
handsome young poet at my age 111 throw them the ist thing in the
morning tUl I see if the wishcard comes out or 111 try pairing the lady
herself and sec if he comes out 111 read and study all I can find or
learn a bit off by heart if I knew who he likes so he wont think me
stupid if he thinks all women are the same and I can teach him the other
part 111 make him feel all over him tUl he half faints under me then
hell write about me lover and mistress pubhdy too with ^ phn'n-
graphs in all the papers when he becomes famous O but then what

am I going to do about him though

no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor

no nothing in his nature slapping us behind like that
because I didnt call him Hugh the ignoramus ‘^at do«nt know poetry
from a cabbage thats what you get for not keeping them in their proper
place pulling®^ off his shoes and trousers there on the

barefaced without even asking permission f""*

TOlgar way in the half of a shirt they wear to be adimred like a pri«t
rf buTcher or those old hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of

course hes right enough in his way to pass the time “ “ ^
mieht as well be in bed with what with a lion God Im sure hed have
sor^ething better to say for himself an old Lion would O well I suppose

735

its because they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he
couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for men all the
amount of pleasure they get off a womans body were so round and
white for them always I w’ished I was one myself for a change just to
try with that thing they have swelling upon you so hard and at the
same time so soft when you touch it my uncle John has a thing long
I heard those cornerboys saying passing the corner of Marrowbone
lane my aunt Mary has a thing hairy because it was dark and they
knew a girl was passing it didnt make me blush why should it either
its only nature and he puts his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy
etcetera and turns out to be you put the handle in a sweepingbrush
men again all over they can pick and choose what they please a married
woman or a fast widow or a girl for their different tastes like those
houses round behind Irish street no but were to be always chained up
theyre not going to be chaining me up no damn fear once I start I tell
you for stupid husbands jealousy why cant we all remain friends over
it instead of quarrelling her husband found it out what they did
together well naturally and if he did can he undo it hes coronado
anyway whatever he does and then he going to the other mad extreme
about the wife in Fair Tyrants of course the man never even casts a
2nd thought on the husband or wife either its the woman he wants and
he gets her what else were we given all those desires for Id like to know
I cant help it if Im young still can I its a wonder Im not an old
shrivelled hag before my time living with him so cold never embracing
me except sometimes when hes asleep the wrong end of me not
knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a womans bottom
Id throw my hat at him after that hed kiss anything unnatural where
we havent i atom of any kind of expression in us all of us the same 2
lumps of lard before ever I do that to a man pfooh the dirty brutes the
mere thought is enough I kiss the feet of you sehorita theres some sense
in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did what a madman nobody
understands his cracked ideas but me still of course a woman wants to
be embraced 20 times a day almost to make her look young no matter
by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody if the fellow
you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I was thinking would
I go around by the quays there some dark evening where nobodyd
know me and pick up a sailor off the sea thatd be hot on for it and not
care a pin whose I was only to do it off up in a gate somewhere or
one of those wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp

736

pitched near the Bloomfield laundry to try and steal our things if
they could I only sent nune there a feu' times to; the nanic iTiodel
laundry sending me back over and over some old ones old stockings
that blackguardlooking fellow with the fine eyes peeling a switch
attack me in the dark and ride tne up against the wall \Nithout a word
or a murderer anybody what they do themselves the fine gentlemen in
their silk hats that K.'C lives up some^^herc this way coming out of
Hardwicke lane the night he gave us the fish supper on account of
winning over the boxing match of course it was tor me he gave it I
knew him by bis gaiters and the walk and when I turned round a
minute after just to see there was a woman after coming out of it too
some filthy prostitute then he goes home to his wife after that only I
suppose the half of those sailors are rotten again with disease O move
over your big carcass out of that for the love of Mike listen to him
the winds that waft my sighs to thee so well he may sleep and sigh the
great Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he knew how he came out
on the cards this morning bed have something to sigh for a dark inan
in some perplexity between 2 7s too in prison for Lord knows what
he does that I dont know and Im to be slooching around down in the
kitchen to get his lordship his breakfast while lies rolled up like a
mummy will I indeed did you ever sec me running Id just like to sec
myself at it show them attention and they treat you like dirt I dont
care w-hat anybody says itd be much better for the world to be governed
by the women in it you wouldnt sec women going and killing one
another and slaughtering when do you ever sec women rolling around
drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it
on horses yes because a woman whatever she docs she knows where
to stop sure they wouldnt be in the w-orld at all only for us they dont
kndw what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where
would they all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them
what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now out at
night away from his books and studies and not living at home on
account of the usual rowy house I suppose well its a poor case that those
that have a fine son like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not
able to make one it wasnt my faolt we came together when I was
watching the two dogs up in her behind .n the m.ddle of the naked
street that disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to have
buried him in that little woolly jacket I knitted crying as I was bu
give it to some poor child but I knew well Id never have another our

» 737

1st death too it was we were never the same since O Im not going to
think myself into the glooms about that any more I wonder why he
wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it was somebody strange he
brought in instead of roving around the city meeting God knows who
nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if
she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so
silent I used to love coming home after dances the air of the night they
have friends they can talk to wevc none cither he wants what he wont
get or its some woman ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in
women no W'onder they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot
ot bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have makes us so snappy Im
not like that he could easy have slept in there on the sofa in the other
room I suppose he was as shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20 of
me in the next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what
harm Dedalus I wonder its like those names in Gibraltar Dclapaz
Delagracia tliey had the devils queer names there father Vial plana of
Santa Maria that gave me the rosary Rosales y ORcilly in the Callc las
Siete Revucltas and Pisimbo and Mrs Opisso in Governor street O
what a name Id go and drown myself in the first river if I had a name
like her O my and all the bits of streets Paradise ramp and Bedlam
ramp and Rodgers ramp and Crutchetts ramp and the devils gap steps
well small blame to me if I am a harumscarum I know I am a bit I
declare to God I dont feel a day older than then I wonder could I
get my tongue round any of the Spanish como csta usted muy bicn
gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all I thought I had only for
the grammar a noun is the name of any person place or thing pity I
never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by
Valera with the questions in it all upside down the two ways I always
knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish and he teW
me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant what a pity he didnt
stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired and wanted a good sleep
badly I could have brought him in his breakfast in bed with a bit of
toast so long as I didnt do it on the knife for bad luck or if the woman
was going her rounds with the watercress and something nice and tasty
there are a few olives in the kitchen he might like I never could bear
the look of them in Abrines I could do the criada the room looks all
right since I changed it the other way you see something was telling
me all the time Id have to introduce myself not knowing me from
Adam very funny wouldnt it Im his wife or pretend we were in Spain

738

with him half awake without a Gods notion where he is dos huevos
cstrellados sehor Lord the cracked things come into my head some-
times itd be great fun supposing he stayed with us why not thcrcs the
room upstairs empty and MiJlys bed in the back room he could do his
writing and studies at the table in there for all the scribbling he does at
it and if he wants to read in bed in the morning like me as hes making
the breakfast for i he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to take
in lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a house like
this Id love to have a long talk with an intelligent welleducated person
Id have to get a nice pair of red slippers like those Turks with the fez
used to sell or yellow' and a nice semitransparent morning gow-n that
I badly want or a peachblossom dressing jacket like the one long ago in
Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 111 just give him one more chance 111 get
up early in the morning Im sick of Cohens old bed in any case I might
go over to the markets to sec all the vegetables and cabbages and
tomatoes and carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in lovely
and fresh who knows whod be the ist man Id meet theyre out looking
for it in the morning Mamy Dillon used to say they arc and the night
too that was her massgoing Id love a big juicy pear now to melt in your
mouth like when I used to be in the longing way then III throw him
up his eggs and tea in the moustachccup she gave him to make his
mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream too I know what III
do 111 go about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then
mi fa picta Masetto then 111 start dressing myself to go out presto non
son pfCi forte 111 put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good
eyeful out of that to make his micky stand for him III let him know
if thats what he wanted that his wife is fucked y« and damn well
fucked too up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning
theres the mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to
even iron it out that ought to satisfy him if you dont believe me feel
my belly unless I made him stand there and put him into me Ive a
mind to tell him every scrap and make him do it in front of me serve
him right its all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the
gallery said O much about it if thats all the harm ever we did in tlus
vale of tears God knows its not much doesnt everybody only they hide
it I suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or Me
wouldn't have made us the way He did so auract.ve 'h'" ^

wants to kiss my bottom 111 drag open my drawers and >>“>8' ‘
out in his face as large as Ufe he can stick his tongue 7 ">•!« “P -"y

739

hole as hes there my brown part then 111 tell him I want or perhaps
;o/ 111 tell him I want to buy underclothes then if he gives me that well
he wont be too bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other
women do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself
and write his name on it for a couple ol pounds a few times he forgot to
lock it up besides he wont spend it 111 let him do it off on me behind
provided he doesnt smear all my good drawers O I suppose that cant
be helped 111 do the indifferent i or 2 questions 111 know by the
answers when hes like that he cant keep a thing back I know every
turn in him III tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words
smellrump or lick my shit or the first mad thing comes into my head
then 111 suggest about yes O wait now sonny my turn is coming 111 be
quite gay and friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest
of a thing ptooh you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry were such
a mixture of plum and apple no III have to wear the old things so much
the better itll be more pointed hell never know whether he did it nor
not there thats good enough for you any old thing at all then 111 wipe
him off me just like a business his omission then 111 go out 111 have
him eyeing up at the ceiling where is she gone now make him want me
thats the only way a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose
theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the
day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming
in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest oc two for his night office the
alarmclock next door at cockshoiit clattering the brains out of itself let
me see if I can doze off 12345 what kind of flowers are those they
invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much
nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore
It twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up early 111
go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get them so send us some
flowers to put about the place in case he brings him home tomorrow
today I mean no no Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place
up someway the dust grows in it I think while.Im asleep then we can
have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean the
keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I w’car a white rose or
those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at
7 1 / 2 d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky
supr I id a couple of lbs of course a nice plant for the middle of the
table Id get. that cheaper in wait whercs this I saw them not long ago
I love flowers Id love to have the whole place sw'imming in roses God

740

of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains tnen ^ie $.ea
and the waves rushing then the beautiful country \'ith fields of oats
and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about
that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all
sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the
ditches primroses and violets nature it is as tor them saying theres no
God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why
dont they go and create something I otten asked him atheists or what-
ever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first
then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why
because theyre afraid ot hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes
I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there
was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do
I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising
tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among
the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his
straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the
bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapycar like now yes 16
years ago my God after that long kiss 1 near lost my breath yes he said
I was a flower of the mountain yes so we arc flowers all a womans body
yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for
you today yes that was w'hy I liked him because I saw he understood
or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and
I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to
say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the
the sky I w'as thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvcy
and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and
the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes
they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house
with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the
Spanish girls laughing in "their shawls and their tall coombs and the
auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jew's and Arabs and
the devil knows w'ho else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street
and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor
donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellow's in the asleep

in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts 0
and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome
Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in
their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas

741

glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wine-
shops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the
boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and
O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson some-
times like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda
gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and
yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums
and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the
mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls
used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish
wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him
with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to
say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes
and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume
yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

T rieste-Zurich'PariSf 1914 - 1921 .

742

Appendix A

TThc trial of the Case Sumntr v. James Joyce took place in De^mber 1920
before a Court of Special Sessions of the District of New York. The prosecu-
cution was directed a«inst The Utile Review where ‘Ulysses was sertahsed
after the seizure of a fifth issue of the magazine containing the publication of
the thirteenth episode. The Court ruled that the publication contravened the
American law and that the defendants be fined $i(M. The publication which
in the meantime had reached the fourteenth episode accordingly discon-
tinued. As a result of the Court’s ruling 'Ulysses could not be «py>?h ^
in the U.S.A. by integral publication, and an unauthonsed and mutiUted
edition was circulated. This fact explains the following two documents.]

I

INTERNATIONAL PROTEST

AGAINST THE UNAUTHORISED & MUTILATED EDITION

OF 'ULYSSES’ IN THE U.S.A.

Paris, ind February 1927

It is a matttr of common knowledge that the of Mr. Jo^c «

*^?e«'’TraVpr<>^riaJon and mntilation of Mr. Joyce's propel^

llLnt^?‘“f™e'“ “esultanf ^^1^ difficulty of^e author to deprive h.m of h..

743

property and to mutilate the creation of his art. The undersigned protest
against Mr. Roth’s conduct in republishing Ulysses and appeal to the American
public in the name of that security of works of the intellect and the imagination
without which art cannot live, to oppose to Mr. Roth’s enterprise the full
power of honourable and fair opinion.

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE.

RICHARD ALDINGTON.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON.

RENE ARCOS.

M. ARCVBACHEFF.

EBBA ATTERBOM.

AZORIN, Prfsidmt de I'/fcadlmie
C. DU BAISSAURAY. [Eif>agnole.

LioN BAZALGETTE.

JACINTO BENAVENTE.

SILVIO BENCO.

JULIEN BENDA.

ARNOLD BENNETT.

JACgUES BENOIST-MECHIN.

KONRAD BERCOVICl.

J. D. BERESFORD.

RUDOLF BINDING.

MASSIMO BONTEMPELLI.

JEAN DE BOSSChIrE.

IVAN BOUNINE, de I’Acadlmu Russe.
ROBERT BRIDGES.

EUOiNE BRIEUX, de I'Aiadimie
BRVHER. [Franfaite.

OLAF BULL.

MARY BUTTS.

LOUIS CAZAMIAN.

JACQUES CHENEVI^RE.

ABEL CHEVALLEY.

MAURICE CONSTANTIN-WEYER.
ALBERT CREMIEUX.

BENJAMIN CREMIEUX.

BENEDETTO CROCE.

ERNST ROBERT CURTIUS.

FRANCIS DICKIE.

H. D.

NORMAN DOUGLAS.

CHARLES DU BOS.

GEORGES DUHAMEL.

EDOUARD DUJARDIN.

LUC DURTAIN.

ALBERT EINSTEIN.

T. S. ELIOT.

HAVELOCK ELLIS.

EDOUARD ESTAUNIE, de I’Aeadlmie
LEON-PAUL FARGUE. [FrattfaisA
£. M. FORSTER.

FRANCOIS FOSCA.

GASTON GALLIMARD.

JOHN GALSWORTHY.

EDWARD GARNETT.

GIOVANNI GENTILE.

PHILIP GIBBS.

ANDRE GIDE.

BERNARD GILBERT.

IVAN GOLL.

RAMON GOMEZ DE LA SERNA.
CORA GORDON.

JAN GORDON.

GEORG GOYERT.

ALICE S. GREEN.

JULIAN GREEN.

AUGUSTA GREGORY.

DANIEL HALEVY.

KNOT HAMSUN.

JANE HARRISON.

H. LIVINGSTON HARTLEY.

744

ERNEST HEMESGWAY-
YRjO HIRN.

HUGO VON HOFMANNSTHAL.
SISLEY HUDDLESTON.

STEPHEN HUDSON.

GEORGE F. HUMMEL.
BAMPTON HUNT.

BRAVIG IMBS.

HOLBROOK JACKSON.

EDMOND JALOUX.

STORM JAMESON.

JUAN RAMON JIMENEZ.
EUGENE JOLAS.

HENRY RESTING JONES.

CF.ORG KAISER.

HERMANN KEYSERLINC.
MANUEL KOMROFF.

A. KOUPRINE.

RENE LALOU.

PIERRE DE LANUX.

VALERY LARBAUD.

D. H. LAWRENCE.

FREDERIC LEFEVRE.

EMILE LEGOUIS.

WYNDHAM LEWIS.

LUDWIG LEWISOHN.

VICTOR LLONA.

MINA LOY.

ARCHIBALD MACLEI8H.
BRINSLEY MACNAMARA.
MAURICE MAETERLINCK.
THOMAS MANN.

ANTONIO MARICHALAR.
MAURICE MARTIN DU CARD.
DORA MARSDEN.

JOHN MASEFIELD.

W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM.
ANDRE MAUROIS.

D. MEREJKOWSKY.

KKGIS .MICHAUD.

C.\BK!EL MIKo.

HOPE MIRRLFBS.

T. STURGF. MOORE.

PAUJ. MORAND.

AUGUSTE MOREL.

ARTHUR MOSS.

J. MIDDLETON MIRR\.

SEAN O’CAMA .

LIAM o'FLAHEkrV.

JOSE ORTEGA ^ GASSET.
SF.UM.AS o'sULLIV.AN.

ELLIOT H. PAUL.

JEAN PAULHAN.

ARTHUR PINF.HO.

LUIGI PIRANDF-LLO.

JEAN PREVOST.

M.AKCEI. PREVOST, ti, T .Ixodimif
C. F. KAMUZ.

ALFONSO REYES.

ERNEST RHYS.

ELMER £. RICE.

DOROTHY RICHARDSON.
JACQUES ROHFRTFKANCE.
LENNOX ROBINSON.

JOHN RODKFR.

ROMAIN ROLLAND.

JULES ROMA1N5.

BERTRAND RUSSELL.

GEORGE W. RUSSELL (“A. E. )
LUDMILLA SAVITZKV.

JEAN SCHLUMBERGF-R.

MAY SINCLAIR.

W, L. SMYSER.

E. SOMERVILLE.

PHILIPPE SOUPAULT.

ANDRE SPIRE.

TH. STEPHANIDES.

JAMES STEPHENS.

ANDRE SPARES.

ITALO SVEVO.

FRANK SWINNERTON.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
MARCEL THIEBAUT.
VIRGIL THOMSON.
ROBERT DE TRAZ.

C. R. TREVELYAN.
MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
LAURENCE VAIL.

FRITZ VANDERPYL.
FRANCIS VIELE-GRIFFIN.
HUGH WALPOLE.

JACOB WASSERMANN.

H. G. WELLS.

REBECCA WEST.

ANNA WICKHAM.
THORNTON WILDER.
ROBERT WOLF.

VIRGINIA WOOLF.

PAUL VALERY, Jt t'AcaJ/mie Franfaise. W. B. YEATS,
FERNAND VANDEREM.

II

INJUNCTION

AT A Spedal Term, Part II, of the
Supreme Court, held in and for the
County of New York, at the Court
House thereof in the Borough of
Manhattan, New York City, on
the ayth day of E>ecember 1928.

PRESENT:

HON. RICHARD H. MITCHELL

JUSTICE.

Janies Joyce, Plaintiffs

V.

Samuel Roth and Two Worlds Publishing Company, Inc., Defendants.

Upon the summons, amended complaint and the answers thereto, the
deposition of Samuel Roth, subscribed January 10, 1928, the deposition of
James Joyce, taken March 8, 1928, the stipulation between the attorneys for
the respective parties and consent of defendants thereto, both dated
December 19, 1928, and all other proceedings heretofore had herein:

^ Now, on motion of Chadbourne, Stanchficld & Levy, plaintiff’s attorneys,

Adjudged and decreed that the above-named defendants Samuel Roth and
Two Worlds Publishing Company, Inc., and each of them, their officers,
assistants, agents and servants are hereby enjoined, under the penalty by law

described, from using the name of the plaintiff for advertising purposes or
for purposes of trade by » r r

746

(a) Publishing, printing, stating or advertising the name of the plaintiff
in connection with any magazine, periodical or other publication published
by defendants or cither of them;

(F) Publishing, printing, stating or advertising the name of the plaintiff
in connection with any book, writing, manuscript or other work of the
plaintiff;

(f) Publishing, printing, stating or advertising, or otherwise disseminating
the name of the plaintiff in connection with any book, writing, manuscript or
other work of the plaintiff, including the book ‘Ulysses,’ in any issue of
Two Worldi Monthly, Two IVorUs Quarterly, or any other magazine,
periodical or other publication, heretofore or hereafter published by
defendants.

Enter,

R. H. M.

J. S. C.

THOMAS F. FARLEY

{Clerk)

Appendix B
I

A LETTER FROM MR JOYCE TO THE PUBLISHER
OF THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

2 avenue St. Philibert, Pasty.

Paris, April the ind, 1932

Dear Mr Cerf, x. -ka n u ^

I thank you very much for your message conveyed to me by Mr Kooert

Kastor. You ask me for dcuils of the story of the publication of £//y«« and
since you arc determined to fight for its legalisation in the Unit^ States and
to publish what will be the only authentic edition there, I thmk it just as well
to tell you the history of its publication in Europe and the complications
which followed it in America, although 1 was under the impression that they
were already well known. As it is, however, they have given my book in
print a life of its own. Habent sua fata libelli! .

^ You arc surely well aware of the difficulties 1 found m pub ishing anting
I wrote from the very first volume of prose I attempted to publish : Dubltnm,
Publishers and printers alike seemed to agree among themselves, no matter
how divergent their points of view were in other matters, not to publish Any-
thing of mine as I wrote it No less than twentv-two publishers and pnntere
read the manuscript of Dubliners and when at last it was printed some very

747

kind person bouirht out the entire edition and had it burnt in Dublin — a new
an.l private auio- W ithout the collaboration of the I'.goist Press Ltd.
I oiidon, conducted bv Miss Harriet Weaver .4 Poriraii of the Ariiu in n
Tou)!^ M.m might still be in manuscript.

You can well imagine that when I came to Paris in the summer 1920 with
the voluminous manuscript of I’/ysses I stood even slenderer chances of find-
ing a publisher on account of its supiwession alter the publication of the
eleventh episode in the Little Revietc conducted bv Miss Margaret Anderson
and Miss Jane Heap. These two editors were, as you probabiv remember,
prosecuted at the instance of some society and as a result further publication
in serial form was prohibited, the existing copies were confiscated and, I
believe, the finger['rints of the two ladies were taken. The comjdeted manu-
script, however, was offered to one of your colleagues on the American market
but I greatly doubt that he even took the trouble to glance at it.

My friend Mr Ezra Pound and good luck brought me into contact with
a very clever and energetic person Miss Svivia Beach who had been running
for some years previously a small English bookshop and lending library in
Paris under the name of Shakespeare and Co. This brave woman risked what
professional publishers did not wish to, she took the manuscript and handed
it to the printers. These were very scrupulous and understanding French
printers in Dijon, the capital of the French printing press. In fact I attached
no small importance to the work being done well and quickly. Mv eyesight
still permitted me at that time to read the proofs myself and thus it came
about that thanks to extra work and the kindness of Mr Daranti^re the well-
known Dijon printer Ulysses came out a very short time after the manuscript
had been delivered and the first printed copy was sent to me for mv fortieth
birthday on the second of February 1922.

You are however in error when you think that Shakespeare and Co. never
published anything before or after Ulysses. As a matter of fact Miss Sylvia
Beach brought out a little volume of thirteen poems of mine entitled Pomes
Penyciich in 1927 and also a volume of essays and two letters of protest con-
cerning the book I am engaged in writing since [922. This volume was
brought out in 1929 and it bears the title of Our Lxtigmination roiniil his fdCli-
ficinton for iHcnmiiKUion of H'orkht Progress.

The continental publication of Uhsses proved however to be merely the
beginning of complications in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Shipments of copies of Ulysses were made to America and to Great Britain
with the result that all copies were seized and burnt by the Custom authorities
of New York and Folkestone. This created a very peculiar situation. On the
one hand I was unable to acquire the copyright in the United States since I
could not comply with the requirements o/the American copyright law which
demands the repubiication in the United States of any Idiglish book pub-
lished elsewhere within a period of six month? after the date of such publica-
tion, and on the other hand the demand for Uhsses which increased every
year in proportion as the book penetrated into larger circles gave the oppor-

748

tunity for any unscrupulous person to have it printed and sold clandestinclv.
This practice provoked a protest signed by one hundred and sixtv-sevcn
writers of all nationalities and I even obtained an injunction against one of
these unscrupulous persons in a New York court. I am enclosing copies of
both these documents which may interest you. This iniunction, however,
proved of no avail as the enjoined defendant resumed his practice very’ soon
again under another name and with a different mode of procedure, naniely
a photographic forgery' of the Paris edition which contained the falsification
of the Dijon printer’s imprint.

It is therefore with the greatest sincerity that I wish vou all possible
success in your courageous venture both as regards the legalisation of Vlysses
as well as its publication and 1 willingly certify' hereby that not only will your
edition be the only authentic one in the United States but also the only one
there on which I will be receiving royalties.

Personally I will be very gratified if your enterprise is successful as it will
permit American readers who have always proved very kind to me to obtain
the authenticated text of my book without running the risk of helping some
unscrupulous person in his purpose of making profit for himself alone out
of the work of another to which he can advance no claim of moral ownership.

There may be some other points in which you arc interested and 1 hope
that should you be over in Europe again this year you will oblige me by
communicating with me either direct or through my son so as to enable
me to elucidate any point you may still be in doubt about.

Yours sincerely
{Signed) JAMES JOYCE

To: Mr Benneit A. CerJ
Random House, Inc., New York

II

THE DECISION OF- THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
RENDERED DECEMBER 6 , 1933, BY HON. JOHN M.
WOOLSEY LIFTING THE BAN ON ‘ULYSSES’

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

United States of America, i

LibelluHi I

V. \

One Book called 'Ulysses’ /
Random House, Inc., I

Claimant I

OPINION

A. 1 10-59

749

On cress motions for a dteret in a libel of cen/itcation, supplemented by a stipulation — herein-
after described — brought by the United States against the booh 'Ulysses' by fames ftyte,
under Section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930, Title 19 United States Cede, Section I305,
on the ground that the book is obscene within the meaning of that Section, and, hence, is net
importable into the United States, but is subject to seizure, forfeiture and confiscation and
destruction.

United States Attorney — by Samuel C. Coleman, Esq., and Nicholas Atlas, £sq., of
counsel — for the United Sntes, in support of motion for a decree of forfeiture, and in
opposition to motion for a decree dismissing the libel.

Messrs. Greenbaum, WolfF & Ernst — by Morris L. Ernst, Esq., and Alexander Lindey,
Esq., of counsel — attorneys for claimant Random House, Inc., in support of motion for
a decree dismissing the libel, and in opposition to motion for a decree of forfeiture.

WOOLSEY, J:

The motion for a decree dismissing the libel herein is granted, and, con-
sequently, of course, the Government’s motion for a decree of forfeiture
and destruction is denied.

Accordingly a decree dismissing the libel without costs may be entered
herein.

1 . The practice followed in this case is in accordance with the suggestion
made by me in the case of United Slates v. One Book Entitled 'Contraception' y
51 F. (2d) 525, and is as follows:

After issue was joined by the hling of the claimant’s answer to the libel
for forfeiture against ‘Ulysses’, a stipulation was made between the United
States Attorney’s office and the attorneys for the claimant providing:

t. That the book ‘Ulysses’ should be deemed to have been annexed to
and to have become part of the libel just as if it had been incorporated in
its entirety therein.

2. That the parties waived their right to a trial by jury.

3. That each party agreed to move for decree in its favour.

4. That on such cross motions the court might decide all the questions
of law and fact involved and render a general finding thereon.

5. That on the decision of such motions the decree of the Court might
be entered as if it were a decree after trial.

It seems to me that a procedure of this kind is highly appropriate in
libels for the confiscation of books such as this. It is an especially advan-
tageous procedure in the instant case because on account or the length of
‘Ulysses and the difficul^ of reading it, a jurv trial would have been an
extremely unsatisfactory, iC not an almost impossible, method of dealing with
it.

II. I have read 'Ulysses’ once in its entirety and I have read those passages
of which the Government particularly complains several times. In fact, Tor

750

many weeks, my spare time has been devoted to the consideration of the
decision which my duty would require me to make in this matter.

‘Ulysses' is not an easy book to read or to understand. But there has been
much written about it, and in order properly to approach the consideration
of it it is advisable to read a number of other books which have now become
its satellites. The study of ‘Ulysses’ is, therefore, a heav)’ task.

III. The reputation of ‘Ulysses’ in the literary world, however, warranted
my taking such tirrie as was necessary to enable me to satisfy' myself as to the
intent with which the book was written, for, of course, in any case where a
book is claimed to be obscene it roust first be determined, whether the intent
with which it was written was what is called, according to the usual phrase,
pornographic — that is, written for the purpose of exploiting obscenity.

If &e conclusion is that the book is pornographic that is the end of the
inquiry and forfeiture must follow.

But in ‘Ulysses' irt spite of its unusual frankness, I do not detect anywhere
the leer of the sensualist. I hold, therefore, that it is not pornographic.

IV. In writing ‘Ulysses', Joyce sought to make a serious experiment in
a new, if not wholly novel, literary genre. He takes persons of the lower
middle class living in Dublin in 1904 and seeks not only to describe what
they did on a certain day early in June of that year as they went about the
City bent on their usual occupations, but also to tell what many of them
thought about the while.

Joyce has attempted — it seems to me, with astonishing success— to show
how the screen of consciousness with its ever-shifting kJeidoscqpic impres-
sions carries, as it were on a plastic palimpsest, not only what is in the focus
of each man’s observation of tne actual things about him, but also in a penum-
bra! zone residua of past impressions, some recent and some drawn up by
association from the domain of the subsconscious. He shows how each of
these impressions aifects the life and behaviour of the character which he is

describing. . ^ . •

What he seeks to get is not unlike the result of a double or, it that is

possible, a multiple exposure on a cinema film which would give a clear
foreground with a back^ound visible but somewhat blurred and out of focus

in varying degrees. . . , . ,e

To convey by words an effect which obviously lends itself more aporo-

priately to a graphic technique, accounts, it seems to me, for much of the
obscunV whilh meets a reader of ‘Ulysses'. And it al^ ^plains anoth^
aspect of the book, which 1 have further to consider, namely Joyce s sincerity
and his honest effort to show exactly how the minds of his characters

If Joyce did not attempt to be honest in developing ^e technique which
he has adopted in ‘Ulysses’ the result would be psychologically
and thus unfaithful to his chosen technique. Such an attitude would be artis-
tically inexcusable.

751

It is because Joyce has been loyal to his technique and has not funked
its necessary implications, but has honestly attempted to tell fully what his
characters think about, that he has been the subject of so many attacks and
that his purpose has been so often misunderstood and misrepresented. For his
attempt sincerely and honestly to realize his objective has required him
incidentally to use certain words which are generally considered dirty words
and has led at times to what many think is a too poignant preoccupation
with sex in the thoughts of his characters.

The words which are criticized as dirty are old Saxon words known to
almost all men and, I venture, to many women, and are such words as would
he naturally and habitually used, I believe, by the types of folk whose life,
physical and mental, Joyce is seeking to describe. In respect of the recurrent
emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always
be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.

Whether or not one enjoys such a technique as Joyce uses is a matter of
taste on which disagreement or argument is futile, but to subject that tech-
nique to the standards of some other technique seems to me to be little short
of absurd.

Accordingly, I hold that 'Ulysses' is a sincere and honest book and I
think that the criticisms of it arc entirely disposed of by its rationale.

V. Furthermore, 'Ulysses' is an amazing lour de force when one considers
the success which has been in the main achieved with such a difficult objective
as Joyce set for himself. As I have stated, 'Ulysses’ is not an easy book to
read. It is brilliant and dull, intelligible and obscure by turns. In many places
it seems to me to be disgusting, but although it contains, as I have mentioned
above, many words usually considered dirty, 1 have not found anything that
1 consider to be dirt for dirt’s sake. Each word of the book contributes like a
bit of mosaic to the detail of the picture which Joyce is seeking to construct
for his readers.

If one docs not wish to associate with such folk as Joyce describes, that is
one’s own choice. In order to avoid indirect contact with them one may not
wish to read 'Ulysses'; that is quite understandable. But when such a real
artist in words, as Joyce undoubtedly is, seeks to draw a true picture of the
lower middle class in a European city, ought it to be impossible for the
American public legally to see that picture?

To answer this (Question it is not sufficient merely to find, as I have found
above, that Joyce did not write 'Ulysses’ with what is commonly called porno-
graphic intent, I must endeavour to apply a more objective standard to his
book in order to determine its effect in the result, irrespective of the intent
with which it was written.

VI. The statute under which the libel is filed only denounces, in so far
as we arc here concerned, the importation into the United States from any
foreign countiy of ‘any obscene book’. Section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930,

752

Title 19 United States Code, Section 1305. It does not marshal against
books the spectrum of condeinnaton.’ adieccives found, commonly, in la\v$
dealing with matters of this kind. 1 am, therefore, only required to determine
whether ‘Ulysses’ is obscene within the legal detiniton of that word.

The meaning of the word 'obscene' as legally defined by the Courts is:
tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to sexually impure and lustful
thoughts. Dunlop V. L'niHil Slates, 165 b. 4^'^, ^ •lii'-'l liUtes v. One

Book En tilled 'Married Lo'- t,' 4^ I- . (2d) !<2 l . 824 ; L >:;ied States v. One B. k
Entitled ‘Contraception', 51 F. (;d) 525, 528; and compare Dysart v. i'nued
States, 272 U. S. 655, 65'’; Sutearin^en v. United States, l6l L’. S. 446. 450;
United States v. Dennett. 39 F. (2d) 564, 568 (C. C. 2); People v. 11 cnaling,
258 N. Y. 451 , 453.

Whether a particular book would tend to excite such impulses and thoughts
must be tcstcci by the Court’s opinion as to its eftcct on a person with average
sex instincts — what the French would call I'komnie nryen sensuel — who play',
in this branch of legal inquiry , the same role of hypothetical reacent as does
the 'reasonable man’ in the law of torts and ‘the man ie.irned in the art on

questions of invention in patent law.

The risk iiuolvcd in the use of such a reagent arises from the inherent
tendency of the trier of facts, however fair he may intend to be, to make his
reagent too much subservient to his own idiosyncrasies. I lerc, 1 have attempted
to avoid this, if possible, and to make my reagent herein more objective than

he might otherwise be, bv adopting the following course:

After I had made mv decision in regard to the aspect of ‘Ulysses , now-
under consideration, 1 checked my impressions with two friends ot mine
who in my opinion answered to the above stated requirement for my reagent.

These literary assessors— as I might properly describe them— were called
on separately, and neither knew that I was consulting the ”5

men whose opinion on literature and on life 1 value most highly. Ihey had
both read ‘Ulysses’, and, of course, were wholly unconnected with this cause.

Without letting either of my assessors know what my decision was, 1 gave
to each of them the legal definition of obscene and asked each whether in

his opinion ‘Ulysses’ was obscene within that definition.

I was interested to find that they both agreed with my opinion: that
reading ‘Ulysses’ in its entirety, as a book must be read ^

this, did not tend to excite sexual impulses or lustful thoughts ,

net effect on them was only that of a somewhat tragic and ver) powerful

commentary on the inner lives of men and women. , o c * »

It is only with the normal person that the law is concerned. Such a as
I have described, therefore, is the only proper test of obscenity m the case of
a book like ‘Ulysses’ which is a sincere and serious attemp to devise a

753 3

effect of ‘Ulysses’ on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere
does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.

‘Ulysses’ may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.

JOHN M. WOOLSEY

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

December 1933

THE DECISION OF THE UNITED STATES COURT OF
APPEALS, RENDERED AUGUST 7, 1934

United States of America,

Ubellant-Appellant

V.

One Book entitled ‘Ulysses’ by James Joyce
Random House, Inc.,

Claimant-Appellee

Before: MANTON, L. HAND and AUGUSTUS N. HAND, Circuit
Judges

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

Appeal frm Umted States Dutrict Court for the Southern District of New York.

From a decree granting the motion of the claimant-appellee to dismiss the liiel filed by the United
States of America praying for the forfeiture of* Ulysses,' written by fames Joyce, on the ground
that it was an 'obscene book' tvithin the meaning of Section 305 {a) of the Tariff Act of 1930,
the libellant appeals. Affirmed.

Martin Conboy, United States Attorney, for Libellant-AppelUntj Martin Conboy,
Francis H. Horan and John F. Davidson, Counsel.

Greenbaum, WoIfF & Ernst, Attorneys for Claitnant-AppeUee} Morris L. Ernst and
Alexander Lindey, Counsel.

AUGUSTUS N, HAND, Circuit Judge:

This appeal raises sharply the question of the proper interpretation of
Section 305 (a) of the Tariff Act of 1930. That section provi^ that; ‘all
persons are prohibited from importing into the United States from any foreign
country . . , any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertisement,
circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, h^re or image on
or of paper or other material . . .’ and directs that upon the appearance of
any such book or matter at any customs office, the collector shall seize it and

754

inform the District Attorney, we shall institute proceedings for fortciture.
In accordance with the statute the collector seized ‘Ulysses,’ a book written
by James Joyce, and the United States filed a libel for forfeiture.

The claimant Random House, Inc., the publisher of the American edition,
intervened in the cause and filed its answer denying that the book was obscene
and was subject to confiscation and praying that it be admitted into the United
States. The case came on trial before Woolsey, J., who found that the book
taken as a whole, ‘did not tend to excite sexual impulses or lustful thoughts but
that its net effect . . . was only that of a somewhat tragic and very powerful
commentary on the inner lives of men and women.’ He accordingly granted
a decree adjudging that the book was ‘not of the character the entir of which
is prohibited under the provision of section 305 Tariff Act of 1 93® • • •

and dismissing the libel,’ from which this appeal has been taken.

James Joyce, the author of ‘Ulysses,’ may be regarded as a pioneer among
those writers who have adopted the so-called ’stream of consciousness
method of presentation, which has attracted considerable attention in academic

and literary circles.

In this field ‘Ulysses’ is rated as a book of considerable power by persons
whose opinions are entitled to weight. Indeed it has become a sort of con-
temporary classic, dealing with a new subject-matter. It attempts to depict
the thoughts and lay bare the souls of a number of people, some ot them
intellectuals, and some social outcasts, and nothing more, with a literalism
that leaves nothing unsaid. Certain of its passages arc of beauty and un-
doubted distinction, while others arc of a vulgarity that is extreme and the
book as a whole has a realism characteristic of the present age. It supposed
to portray the thoughts of the principal characters dunng a period of about

eighteen hours. ^ . , , ,

We may discount the laudation of ‘Ulysses’ by some of its admirers and

reject the view that it will permanently stand

literature, but it is fair to say that it is a sincere portrayal with skilfu artistry
of the ‘streams of consciousness' of its characters. Though the
happily is not of the 'stream of consciousness’ of all men and perhaps y
thow of a morbid type, it seems to be sincere, truthful, relevant to
"reS wi.hT«l Joyce, in .he word, of

with ‘things unattempted yet in prose or rime .... with thinp that ry
likely migS better have remained ’unattempted,' but his ^^"^he

ality and is a work of symmetry and excellent craftsmanship of a sort. he
question before us is whether such ^^>ook of artistic mer and scicnt he

Tnsight should be regarded as ‘obscene’ within Section 305 (a) of the

^ That numerous long p^sages i" 'Ulysses^ “ttid'yeUhey’are r"
under any fair definition of the word cannot be gainsaid, yet th y , ^

to the purpose of depicting the thoughts of the

to give meaning to the whole, rather than to promo e such as

forlts own sake. The net effect even of portions most open to attack.

755

the closing monologue of the wife of Leopold Bloom, is pitiful and tragic,
rather than lustful. The book depicts the souls of men and women that arc
by turns bewildered and kcenK' apprehensive, sordid and aspiring, ugly and
beautiful, hateful and loving. In the end one feels, more than anything else,
pity and sorry for the confusion, misery and degradation of humanity. Page
after page of the book is, or seems to be, incomprehensible. But many
passages show the trained hand of an artist, who can at one moment adapt
to perfection the style of an ancient chronicler, and at another become a
veritable personification of Thomas Carlyle. In numerous places there are
found originality, beauty and distinction. The book as a whole is not porno-
graphic, and while in not a few spots it is coarse, blasphemous and obscene,
it does not, in our opinion, tend to promote lust. "I hc erotic passages are
submerged in the book as a whole and have little resultant effect. If these
are to make the book subject to confiscation, by the same test 'Venus and
Adonis,’ ‘Hamlet,’ ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ and the story told in the Eighth Book
of the 'Odyssey' by the bard Demodocus of how Ares and Aphrodite were
entrapped in a net spread by the outraged Hephaestus, amid the laughter of
the immortal gods, as well as many other classics, would have to be suppressed.
Indeed, it may be questioned whether the obscene passages in ‘Romeo and
Juliet’ were as necessary to the development of the play as those in the mono-
logue of Mrs. Bloom arc to the depiction of the latter’s tortured soul.

It is unnecessary to add illustrations to show that, in the administration
of statutes aimed at the suppression of immoral books, standard works of
literature have not been barred merely because they contained some obscene
passages and that confiscation for such a reason would destroy much that is
precious in order to benefit a few.

It is settled, at least so far as this court is concerned, that works of
physiolog)-, medicine, science, and sex instruction are not within the statute,
though to some extent and among some persons they may tend to promote
lustful thoughts. United States v. Bennett, 39 Fed. (2d) 564. We think the
same immunity should apply to literature as to science where the presentation,
when viewed objectively, is sincere and the erotic matter is not introduced to
promote lust and does not furnish the dominant note of the publication.
The question in each case is whether a publication, taken as a whole, has a
libidinous effect. The book before us has such portentous length, is written
with such evident trustfulness in its depiction of certain types of humanity,
and is so little erotic in its resultant, that it does not fall within the forbidden
class.

In Halsey v. N.Y. Society, 234 N.Y. i, the New York Court of Appeals
dealt with ‘Mademoiselle dc Maupin,’ by Theophile Gautier, for the sale of
which the plaintiff has been prosecuted under a New York statute forbidding
the sale of obscene books upon the complaint of the defendant. After acquittal,
the plaintiff sued for malicious prosecution, and a jury rendered a verdict in
his favour. *rhe court of appeals refused to disturb the judgment because
the book had become a recognized French classic and its merits on the whole

756

outweighed its objectionable qualities thouch as Judge Andrews said, it
contained many paragraphs which, ‘taken by'thcmselves', were ‘undoubtedly
vulgar and indecent.’ In referring to the obscene passages, he remarked that:
'no work may be judged from a selection of such paragraphs alone. Printed by
themselves they might, as a matter of law, come within the prohibition of the
statute. So might a similar selection from Aristophanes or Chaucer or
Boccaccio or even from the Bible. The book, however, must be considered
broadly as a whole.’ We think Judge .Andrews was clearly rii;ht and that the
eftect of the book as a whole is the test.

In the New York Supreme Court, Judge Morgan J. O’Brien declined to
prohibit a receiver from selling 'Arabian Nights.’ ‘Rabelais,’ Ovid’s 'Art
of l.ove,' the ’Decameron’ of Boccaccio, the ‘Heptameron’ of Queen
Margaret of Navarre, or the ‘Confessions' of Rousseau. I Ic remarked that a
rule uhich would exclude them would b.ir 'a verv large proportion of the works
of fiction of the most famous writers of the Knclis>h language.’ (In rc
Worthington Co., qo N.A. Supp. 3 ^*-) main difFerenrc between many
standard works and 'Ulysses,' is its far more abundant use of coarse and
colloquial words and presentation of dirty scenes, rather than in anv excess
of prurient suggestion. We do not think th.it 'Ulysses' taken as a whole tends
to promote lust and its criticized [)assagcs do this no more than scores of
standard books that .ire constantly bought and sold. Indeed a book of
physiology in the hands of adolescents may be more objectionable on this
ground than almost anything else.

But it is argued that United States v. Bennett, I'ed. cas. No. 14,571, stands
in the way of what has been said, and it certainly does. There a court, con-
sisting of Blatchford, C.J., and Benedict & Choate, D.JJ., held that the
offending paragraphs in a book could be taken from their context and the
book judged by them alone, and that the test of obscenity was whether the
tendency of these passages in themselves was 'to de[>rave the minds of those
open to such influences and into whose hands a publication of this character
might come.'

The opinion was founded upon a dictum of Cockburn, C.J., in Regina v.
Hicklin, L.R. 3 Q.B. 360, where half of a book written to attack the alleged
practices of the confession was obscene and contained, as Mellor, J., said:

‘ a great deal . . . which there cannot be any necessity for in any legitimate
argument on the confessional. . . .' It is said that in Rosen v. United States,

1 6 1 U.S. 29, the Supreme Court cited and sanctioned Regina v. Hicklin, and
United States v. Bennett. The subject-matter of Rosen v. United States was,
however, a pictorial representation of ‘females in different attitudes of in-
decency.’ The figures were partially covered ‘with lamp black that could
be easily erased by a piece of bread’ (p. 31). The pictures were evidently
obscene and plainly came within the statute prohibiting their transportation.
The citation of Regina v. Hicklin and United States v. Bennett, was in
support of ruling that allegations in the dictment as to an obscene publication
need only be made with sufficient particularit)’ to inform the accused of the

757

nature of the charge against him. No approval of other fcatxires involved in
the two decisions was expressed, nor were such features referred to. Dunlop v.
United States, 165 U.S. 489, also seems to be relied on by the government,
but the publication there was admittedly obscene and the decision in no way
sanctioned the rulings in United States v. Bennett which we first mentioned.
The rigorous doctrines laid down in that case are inconsistent with our own
decision in United States v. Bennett, 39 Fed. (2d) 564, as well as with
Konda v. United States ,166 Fed. 91, 92; Clark v. United States, 21 1 Fed.
916, 922; Halsey v. N.Y. Society, 234 N.Y. i, 4; and St. Hubert Guild v.
Quinn, 64 Misc. 336, 339, and in our opinion do not represent the law. They
would exclude much of the great works of literature and involve an impractic-
ability that cannot be imputed to Congress and would in the case of many
books containing obscene passages inevitably require the court that uttered
them to restrict their applicability.

It is true that the motive of an author to promote good merals is not the
test of whether a book is obscene and it may also be true that the applicability
of the statute does not depend on the persons to whom a publication is likely
to be distributed. The importation of obscene books is prohibited generally
and no provision is made permitting such importation because of the character
of those to whom* they are sold. While any construction of the statute that
will fit all cases is difficult, we believe that the proper test of whether a given
book is obscene is its dominant effect. In applying this test, relevancy of the
objectionable parts to the theme, the established reputation of the work in the
estimation of approved critics, if the book is modern, and the verdict of the

f )ast if it is ancient, are persuasive pieces of evidence, for works of art are not
ikely to sustain a high position with no better warrant for their existence than
their obscene content.

It may be that ‘Ulysses’ will not last as a substantial contribution to
literature and it is certainly easy to believe that in spite of the opinion of
Joyce’s laudators, the immortals will still reign, but the same thing may be
said of current works of art and music and of many other serious efforts of
the mind. Art certainly cannot advance under compulsion to traditional forms
and nothing in such a field is more stifling tt^rogress than limitation of the
right to experiment with a new technique. The foolish judgments of Lord
Eldon about one hundred years ago, proscribing the works of Byron, Shelley
and Southey, are a warning to all who have to determine the limits of the field
within which authors may exercise themselves. We think that 'Ulysses’ is a
book of originality and sincerity of treatment and that ft has not the effect of
promoting lust. Accordingly it does not fall within the statute, even though
It justly may offend many.

MANTON, Circuit Judge (dissenting);

I dissent. This libel, filed against the book ‘Ulysses,’ prays for a decree
of forfeiture and it is based upon the claim that the book’s entry into the
United States is prohibited by Sec. 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930. 19 U.S.C.A.

758

1305 (a). On motion of appeflee, the court below entered an order dismissing
the libel and the collector of customs was ordered to release the book. The
motion was considered on the pleadings and a stipulation entered into by the
parties.

The sole question presented is whether or not the book is obscene within
Sec. 305 (a) which provides:

'All persons are prohibited from importing into the United States from any
foreign country . . . any obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertise-
ment, circular, print, picture, drawing, or other representation, figure or
image on or of paper or other material. . . .

‘Upon the appearance of any such book or matter at any customs office,
the same shall be seized and held by the collector to await the judgment of
the district court as hereinafter provided. . . . Upon the seizure of such book
or matter the collector shall transmit information thereof to the district
attorney of the district in which is situated the office at which such seizure
has taken place, who shall institute proceedings in the district court for the
forfeiture, confiscation, and destruction of the book or matter seized. . . .

‘In any such proceeding any party in interest may upon demand have the
facts at issue determined by a jury and any party may have an appeal or the
right of review as in the case of ordinary actions or suits.’

The parties agreed as to the facts in the stipulation. There is no conflicting
evidence; the decision to be made is dependent entirely upon the reading
matter found on the objectionable pages of the book (pages 173, 2I3> 214,
359. 36 j, 423. 424. 434. 467, 488, 498, 500, 509, 522, 526, 528, 551, 7«9.
724, 727, 731, 738, 739, 745, 746, 754, 756, 761, 762. 765, Random
House Edition). The book itself was the only evidence offered.

In a suit of this kind upon stipulation, the ultimate finding based solely on
stipulated facts is reviewablc on appeal to determine whether the facts support
the finding. Lumbermen’s Trust Co. v. Town of Ryegate, 61 Fed. 2d,
14 (C.C.A. 9); Order of United Commercial Travellers of America v. Shane,
64 Fed. 2d. 55 (C.C.A. 8). Moreover, the procedure in this suit in rem
conforms to that obtaining in suits in admiralty (Coffey v. United Sutes,
1 17. U.S. 233), where the appellate courts may review the facts. The African
Maru, 54 Fed. 2d, 265 (C.C.A. 2); The Perry Setzer, 299 Fed. 586

(C.C.A. 2). ^ ^ .

Who can doubt the obscenity of this book after a reading ot the pages
referred to, which are too indecent to add as a footnote to this opinion? Its
characterization as obscene should be quite unanimous by all who read it.

In the year 1868 in Regina v. Hincklin L. R., 3 Q.B. 359, at 369,

Cockburn, C.J., stated that: i. ^

‘The test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged
as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such
immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort may

^*in 1879, in United States v. Bennett (Fed. Cases No. 1457*)

759

Blatchford, later a justice of the Supreme Court, in this Circuit, sitting with
Judges Choate and Benedict, approved the rule of the Hicklin case and held a
charge to a jury proper which embodied the test of that case. The Bennett
case clearly holds the test of obscenity, within the meaning of the statute, is
'whether the tendency of the matter is to deprave and corrupt the morals of
those whose minds are open to such influences and into whose hands a publica-
tion of this sort may fall.’ The court held that the object of the use of the
obscene words was not a subject for consideration.

Judge Blatchford’s decision met with approval in United States v. Rosen
(151 U.S. 29). The court had under consideration an indictment charging
the accused with depositing obscene literature in the mails. Their instructions
to the jur}' requested that conviction could not be had although the defendant
may have had knowledge or notice of the contents of the letter ‘unless he knew
or believed that such paper could be properly or justly characterized as
obscene, lewd and lascivious.’ The court said the statute was not to be so
interpreted.

‘'I'hc inquiry under the statute is whether the paper charged to have been
obscene, lewd and lascivious was in fact of that character, and if it was of that
character and was deposited in the mail by one who knew or had notice at the
time of its contents, the offence is complete, although the defendant himself
did not regard the paper as one that the statute forbade to be carried in the
mails. Congress did not intend that the question as to the character of the
paper should depend upon the opinion or belief of the person who, with
knowledge or notice of its contents, assumed the responsibility of putting it
in the mails of the United States. The evils that Congress sought to remedy
could continue and increase in volume if the belief of the accused as to what
was obscene, lewd and lascivious were recognized as the test of determining
whether the statute has been violated. Everyone who uses the mails of the
United States for carrying papers or publications must take notice of what, in
this enlightened age, is meant by decency, purity and chastity in social life
and what must be deemed obscene, lewd ana lascivious.’

Further the Supreme Court approved the test of the Hicklin case. On
page 43 the court states:

'That was what the court did when it charged the jury that the test of
obscenity is whether the tendency of the matter is to deprave and corrupt the
morals of those whose minds are open to such influence and into whose hands
a publication of this sort may fall. "Would it," the court said, "suggest or
convey lewd thoughts and lascivious thoughts to the young and inexperi-
enced?” In view of the character of the paper, as an inspection of it will
instantly disclose, the test prescribed for the jury was quite as liberal as the
defendant had any right to demand.’

Again the Supreme Court in Dunlop v. United States (165 U.S. 486)
reviewed a charge in a criminal case upon the subject of obscene publications
as follows:

‘Now, what is (arc) obscene, lascivious, lewd or indecent publications is

760

hreely a question of your own conscience and your own opinion; but it mu't
come— before it can be said of such literature or publication — it must come
up to this point; that it must be calculated with the ordinar)- reader to deprave
him, deprave his morals, or lead to impure purposes; ... It is your duty to
ascertain in the first place if they arc calculated to deprave the morals; if they
are calculated to lower that standard which we regard as essential to civiliza-
tion; if they arc calculated to excite those feelings which, in their larger field
are all right, but which, transcending the limits ot that proper field, play most
of the mischief in the world.’

In approving the charge, the court said:

‘The alleged obscene and indecent matter consisted of advertisements by
women, soliciting or offering inducements for the visits of men, usually
"refined gentlemen,’’ to their rooms, sometimes under the disguise of
"Baths” and "Massage,” and oftencr for the mere purpose of .uquaintancc.
It w.is in this connection that the court charged the jury that, if the publica-
tions were such as were calculated to deprave the morals, they were within
the statute. There could have been no possible mis-apprehension on their
part as to what was meant/ There was no question as to depraving the morals
in any other direction than that of impure sexual relations. The words were
used by court in their ordinary signification and were made more definite by
the context; and by the character of the publications which have been put in
evidence. The court left to the jury- to say whether it was within the statute,
and whether persons of ordinary intelligence would have any difficulty in
divining the intention of the advertiser.’

Thus the court sustained a charge having a test as to whether or no the
publications depraved the morals of the ordinary reader or tended to lower
the standards of civilization. The tendency of (he matter to deprave and
corrupt the morals of those whose minds arc open to such influence and into
whose hands the publication of this sort may fall, has become the test
thoroughly entrenched in the Federal Courts. United States v. Bebout,
28 Fed. J22 (D.C.); United States v, Wightman, 29 Fed. 636; United
States V. Clarke, 38 Fed. 732 ; United Slates v. Smith, 45 Fed. 476; Burton v.
United States, 142 Fed. 57 (C.C.A. 8); United States v. Bennett, 38 Fed.
2d, 564 (C.C.A. 2). What is the probable effect on the sense of decency of
society extending to the family made up of men, women, young boys and girls,
was said to be the test in United Sutes v. Harmon {45 Fed. 414)-

‘Ulysses’ is a work of fiction. It may not be comoared with books involving
medical subjects or description of certain physical or biological facts. It is
written for alleged amusement of the reader only. The characters described
in the thoughts of the author may in some instances be true, but, be it truthful
or otherwise, a book that is obscene is not rendered less so by the statement
of truthful fact. Burton v. United States, supra. It cannot be said that the
test above has been rejected by United States v. Bennett (39 Fed. (2), 564)»
nor can that case be taken to mean that the book is to be judged as a whole.

If anything, the case clearly recognizes that the book may be obscene

761

because portions thereof arc so, for pains are taken to justify and show not
to be obscene, portions to which objection is made. The gist of the holding
is that a book is not to be declared obscene if it is ‘an accurate exposition of
the relevant facts of the sex side of life in decent language and in manifestly
serious and disinterested spirit.*

A work of obvious benefit to the community was never intended to be
within the purview of the statute. No matter what may be said on the side of
letters, the effect on the community can and must be the sole determining
factor. 'Laws of this character are made for society in the aggregate, and not
in particular. So, while there may be individuals and societies of men and
women of peculiar notions or idiosyncrasies whose moral sense would neither
be depraved nor offended . . . yet the exceptional sensibility or want of
sensibility of such cannot be allowed as a standard.’ United States v. Harmon,
supra.

In United States v. Kennerley (209 Fed. 1 1 9) the Bennett case was followed
despite the dictum objecting to a test which protected the ‘salacious’ few. By
the very argument used, to destroy a test which protects those most easily
influenced, we can discard a test which would protect only the interests of the
other comparatively small groups of society. If we disregard the protection
of the morals of the susceptible, are we to consider merely the benefits and
pleasures derived from letters by those who pose as the more highly developed
and intelligent? To do so would show an utter disregard for the standards
of decency of the community as a whole and an utter disregard for the effect
of a book upon the averse less sophisticated member of society— not to
mention the adolescent. The court cannot indulge any instinct it may have
to foster letters. The statute is designed to protect society at large— of that
there can be no dispute — notwithstanding the deprivation of benefits to a
few, a work must be condemned if it has a depraving influence.

And are we to refuse to enforce the statute Congress has enacted because
of the argument that ‘obscenity is only the superstition of the day — the
modern counterpart of ancient witchcraft.’ Are we to be persuaded by the
statement, set forth in the brief, made by the judge below in an interview with
the press, ‘Education, not law, must solve problems of taste and choice (of
books)’ when the statute is clear and our duty plain?

The prevailing opinion states that classics would be excluded if the applica-
tion of the statute here argued for prevailed. But the statute provides as to
classics that they may be introduced into the commerce of the United States
provided ‘that the Secretary of the Treasury ... in his discretion, admit the
so-called classics or books of recognized and established literary or scientific
merit, but may in his discretion admit such classics or books only when
imported for non-commercial purposes.’ The right to admission under this
proviso was not sought nor is it justified by reason thereof in the prevailing
opinion.

Congress passed this statute against obscenity for the protection of the great
mass of our people — the unusual literator can, or thinks he can, protect nim-

762

self. The people do not exist for the sake of literature; to give the author
fame, the publisher wealth and the book a market. On the contrary’, literature
exists for the sake of the people; to refresh the wear)', to console the sad, to
hearten the dull and downcast, to increase man's interest in the world, his joy
of living and his sympathy in all sorts and conditions of men. Art for art’s
sake is heartless and soon grows artless; art for the public market is not art
at all, but commerce; art for the people’s service is a noble, vital and per-
manent element of human life.

The public is content with the standard of saleability; the prig with the
standaro of precosity. The people need and deserve a moral standard; it
should be a point of honour with men of letters to maintain it. Masterpieces
have never been produced by men given to obscenity or lustful thoughts —
men who have no master. Reverence for good work is the foundation of
literary character. A refusal to imitate obscenity or to load a book with it, is
an author’s professional chastity.

Good work in literature has its permanent mark — it is like all good work,
noble and lasting. It requires a human aim — to cheer, console, purify or
ennoble the life of people. Without this aim, literature has never sent an arrow
close to the mark. It is by good work only that men of letters can justify their
right to a place in the world.

Under the authoritative decisions and considering the substance involved
in this appeal, it is my opinion that the decree should be reversed.

[Decree affirmed.

IV

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

BY MORRIS L, ERNST, COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENCE

FOR RANDOM HOUSE, INC.

The new deal in the law of letters is here. Judge Woolsey has exonerated
Uljises of the charge of obscenity, handing down an opinion that bids fair to be-
come a major event in the history of the struggle for free expression. Mr Joyce's
masterpiece, for the circulation of which people have been branded criminals
in the past, may now freely enter this country.

It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Judge Woolsey ’s
decision. For decades the censors have fought to emasculate literature. They
have tried to set up the sensibilities of the prudery-ridden as a criterion for
society, have sought to reduce the reading matter of adults to the level of
adolescents and subnormal persons, and have nurtured evasions and sancti-
monies.

The Vlyaei case marks a turning point. It is a body-blow for the censors.
The necessity for hypocrisy ana circumlocution in literature has been

763

eliminated. \i'ritcrs need no longer seek refuge in euphemisms. They may
mnv describe basic human functions without fear of the law.

The case has a three-fold significance. The definition and criteria

of obscenitv have long vexed us. Judge W'oolsey has given us a formula which
is lucid, ration.al and pr.actical. In doinc so he has not only charted a labyrin-
thine branch of the law, but has written an opinion which raises him to the
level of former Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as a master
of juridical prose. His service to the cause of free letters has been of no
lesser moment. But perhaps his greatest service has been to the community.
The precedent he has established will do much to rescue the mental pabulum
of the public from the censors who have striven to convert it into treacle, and
will help to make it the strong, provocative fare it ought to be.

I'he first week of December 1 933 will go down in history for two repeals,
that of Prohibition and that of the legal compulsion for squeamishness in
literature. It is not inconceivable that these tw'o have been closely interlinked
in the recent past, and that sex repressions found vent in intemperance. At
anv rate, wc mav now imbibe freely of the contents of bottles and forthright
books. It mav well be that in the future the repeal of the sex taboo in letters
will , 'rove to be of the greater importance. Perhaps the intolerance which
closed our distilleries was the intolerance which decreed that basic human
functions had to l)e treated in books in a furtive, leering, roundabout manner.
Happilv, both of these have now been repudiated.

'I'he Ulysses case is the culmination of a protracted and stubborn struggle
against the censors dating back to the victory over the New York Vice
Society in the Mademoiselle de Maupin case in 1922. Coming in logical
sequence after the IVell oj Loneliness case, the Dennett case, the cases involving
Dr. Slopes’ books, the Casanova's Homecoming case, the Frankie and Johnnie
case, and the God's Little Here case, all of which have served to liberalise the
law of obscenity, the victory of Ulysses is a fitting climax to the salutary
forward march of our courts.

Under the Ulysses case it should henceforth be impossible for the censors
legally to sustain an attack against any book of artistic integrity, no matter
how frank and forthright it may be. We have travelled a long way from the
days of Bowdler and Mrs Grundy and Comstock. We may well rejoice over
the result.

MORRIS L. ERNST

AVti’ Fork, December 1 1, 1933

764

Appendix C

BIBLIOGR.APHY OF WORKS BY MR. JAMES JOYCE

1 Parnell Pamphlet, n.d. Alley & O’Reilly, Dublin, c. 1891. Existence

never satisfactorily proved.

2 Ibsen’s New Drama, Fortnightly Review, April 1900; privately reprinted,

Ulysses Bookshop, London, n.d., 1930.

3 The Day of Rabblement, published in Two Essayt, Dublin, 1901; the other

essay being ‘A forgotten Aspect of the University Question’ by P\ J.
Shcehy-Skeffington.

4 James Clarence Mancan, St. Stephen's, Dublin, May 1902; reprinted,

Ulysses Bookshop, London, n.d., 1930.

5 The Holy Office, n.d.n.p., c. 1904. (Probably printed in Rome, 1905.)

6 Chamber Music, Elkin Mathews, London, 1907. 1918; B. W. Huebsch,

New York, 1918; The Egoist Press, London, 1923; Jonathan Cape,
London, 1924-1945 (8 printings).

7 Articles in // Piccolo della Sera, Trieste, 1907, et seq.

8 Letter to the Press, August 18, 191 T, in Sinn Fein, Dublin, and in Northern

mig, Belfast.

9 Gas from a Burner, n.d.n.p., Trieste, 1912.

10 Dubliners, Grant Richards, London, 1914, 1918; B. W. Huebsch, New

York, 1916; The Egoist Press, London, 1921; serialized in The Egoist,
London, 1914-1915; Jonathan Cape, London, 1924-1947 (18 printings).

1 1 A Portrait op the Artist as a Younc Man, B. W. Huebsch, New York,

1916; The Egoist Press, London, 1917: Jonathan Cape, London, 1924-
1948 (21 printings).

12 Exiles, Grant Richards, London, 1918; B. W. Huebsch, New York, 1918;

Jonathan Cape, London, 1924-1936 (4 printings).

13 Ulysses, fourteen episodes serialized in The Little Review, New York, 1918-

1920; four epistles serialized in The Egoist, London, 1919: Shakespeare
it Co., Paris, 1922-1930 (ii printings); The Egoist Press, London,
1922 and 1923 (two copies extant, others destroyed by customs); The
Odyssey Press, Paris, Hamburg, Bologna, 1932; Random House, New
York, 1934; The Limited Editions Club, with illustrations by Henri
Matisse, New York, 1935; John Lane the Bodley Head, London, 1936-
*949 (5 printings).

14 Pomes Penyeach, Shakespeare Sc Co., Paris, 1927; with illuminated lettrines

in colour by Miss Lucia Joyce, The Obelisk Press, Paris, 1932; Faber Sc
Faber, London, 1933-1945 (5 printings); with portrait by Augustus John,

765

preface bv Padraic Colum, prologue by James Stephens, introduction by
Herbert Hughes, epilogue by Arthur Symons and musical settings by
E. J. Moeran. Arnold Bax, Albert Roussel, Herbert Hughes, John Ireland,
Roger Sessions, Arthur Bliss, Herbert Howells, George Antheil, Edgardo
Carducci, Eugene Goossens, C. W.Orrand Bernard Van Dieren under the
title The Joyce Book, The Sylvan Press, London, 1933.

1 5 Finnegans Wake. Faber & Faber, London, 1939-1948 (3 printings). Viking

Press, New York, 1939; and was published in fragments as Work in
Progress, 1924-1937; in the following magazines. The Transatlantic
Review, This Quarter, The Criterion, Le Navire (T Argent, The Contact
Collection of Contemporary IVriters, Contempo, V trve, and Transition,

1938 (all of Parts 1 and III and two thirds of Part II); also:

[a) First section, privately printed in the U.S.A. by Donald Friede,
New York, 1927.

(i) ANNA LiviA PLURABELLE, Crosby Gaigc, Ncw York, 1928; Faber Sc
Faber, London, 1931; (French translation of a few pages in La Nouvelle
Revue Francaise, May i, 1931)

(c) TALES TOLD OF sHEM AND SHAUN, The BUck Sun Pfess, Paris, 1929;
TWO TALES OF SHEM AND SHAUN (being the above with omission of ‘The
Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump’), Faber & Faber, London,

1932

[J) HAVETH CHILDERS EVERYWHERE, H. Babou and J. Kahane, Paris,
1930; Faber & Faber, London, 1931.

(^) THE MIME OF MICK, NICK AND THE MACCIE8, with illuminated COVCt

design, initial and tailpiece in colour by Miss Lucia Joyce, The Servire
Press, The Hague, 1934.

(/) sTORiELLA AS SHE IS sYUNC, Corvinus Prcss, London, 1937*

16 From a Banned Writer to a Banned Singer, The New Statesman and

Nation, February 27, 1932; (French translation in Mesures, No. i, Paris,
1936). Includ^ in Turnstile One, 1948

17 Ecce Puer, The Criterion, 1932.

18 Collected Poems, being a collected edition of Nos. 6, 14 2nd I 7 » Black Sun

Press, New York, 1936 (limited edition. The Viking Press, New York,

> 937 )-

19 Stephen Hero, Jonathan Cape, London, 1944* New Directions, New York,

1944.

(Various translations of the above works have appeared in French,
German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Swedish, Finnish,

Dutch, Czechisk, Polish, Hungarian, Greek, Russian, Chinese
and Japanese.)

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